System and method for creating exalted video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims the benefit of provisional patent Ser. No. 60/959,051 filed Jul. 11, 2007 by the present inventor.

FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH

Not Applicable

SEQUENCE LISTING OR PROGRAM

Not Applicable

INTRODUCTION

Field of the Invention

This present invention pertains to video games and virtual worlds created by an electronic means. More particularly, this invention pertains to novel, exalted video games that present deeper gameplay, meaning, character, and story. Contemporary and prior video games have yet to incorporate all the exalted subtleties of mythology, which of course is the roadmap to our human reality, and thus games fall short of human reality and exalted art, as they fall short of ideals, idealism, and the reality that ideas have consequences. The present invention pertains to video games which have characters possessing ideologies, philosophies, and souls, wherein said ideologies and souls are manifested in the character's actions and the evolution of the game world, as ideas have consequences. This invention proposes a novel form of video games wherein characters speak words reflecting ideologies and philosophies, and wherein said ideologies and philosophies may be rooted in historical ideologies, classical philosophies, the philosophies of our American Founders, the wisdom of the Great Books and Classics, and/or philosophies and ideologies that counter the wisdom of the Great Books and Classics, which favor lying and hyping over truth and justice. The player's choices in the game depend on whether or not they take the classical wisdom and advice to heart, and whether or not they render ideals real via action. For instance, in The Odyssey, Odysseus states “Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end,” and upon hearing those words in a game based on The Odyssey's moral precepts, the player can choose whether to deal fairly and fight for justice, or jack cars, pensions, and savings as the fiatocracy does via the inflation tax. The entire American Revolution could be brought to life, wherein after hearing a speech from George Washington, players could choose to either follow Washington, or do nothing. The Civil War, and all historical conflicts could be brought to life, where the player first hears the ideas and arguments of both sides, and then chooses what to do, and who to fight for.

Classical principles of economics can be brought to life, including Moses' “Thou shalt not steal.” A character could hear a prophet stating this on street corner, and if they heed the advice, the game is eventually won. If they ignore it, the game, and the game world, are lost. A character could impart classical wisdom such as “What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose their soul?” If the player heeds the higher ideals and seeks the higher path, then they will be rewarded not with money and jacked cars, but with their soul. And a novel weapon such as the “Gold 45 Revolver” will only glow gold when the player's soul is in tact, and the soul is in tact only when the player has made moral choices throughout the game and rendered moral word with moral deed via action in the game world. So it is that we would witness a renaissance in gaming and the exaltation of gaming as a classical art, wherein in-game characters could battle for classical ideas and ideals underlying freedom and prosperity.

The rising generation will witness a renaissance in video games, as well as across all culture, wherein classical ideals have exalted consequences. An in-game character or non-player-character (npc) might quote Burke in saying, “for evil to prevail, all good men must do is nothing.” Upon hearing this, the character could choose to take the higher road and take action to fight for higher ideals, or they could let their nation become morally and spiritually bankrupt by the feminist fanboy fiatocracy.

The player character can choose whether or not to interact, as well as how to interact with characters based on their ideologies, which are manifested by words and deed. The player character can choose to engage in dialogue with npc's, seeking to reason with them, and exalt their sensibilities. When reasoning fails, as it so often does with fanboys who detest reading the manly classical economists and prefer comic books with pretty pictures of big green men, as they were raised by single mother who demonized their real fathers, the player character can then choose to interact with the characters in other manners, such as shooting them.

The present invention will foster a new era of exalted gaming in multiple formats and forms, including RPGs, FPS, an MMORPGs, and too, it would provide enhanced means for bringing successful films and dramatic art to life in the realm of video games and gaming. Producers have failed time and again to translate movies into games and games into movies, and that is because they do not comprehend nor grasp the secret—the classical ideals which have consequences and the simple moral premise must be woven into the fabric of games at very level. For the classical ideals are the most efficient and natural and simple way to unite the plot and the subplot, the dramatic action and physical action, the love interest and the battle. Most fanboy producers, who came of age in a declining fiatocracy, are used to arrogance, hypes, and doublespeak as methods and means for producing movies, which ultimately suck. So it is that this present invention would exalt and foster novel video games that would in turn exalt and foster a cultural renaissance; wherein one would be able to battle the snarky fiatocracy producers head-on, both in the context game and beyond it, finally avenging all the innocent civilians, prostitutes, children, cops, and unborn who have been killed by the fiatocracy's fanboys, while the artist's natural rights have been dismantled and debauched, and the home and family destroyed along with the currency. So often it is that the poet and hero know not what they do, and this game humbles itself before the epic poets, prophets, and heroes of all ages; even as Socrates' ultimately, and reluctantly humbled himself before Homer, who was exalted by Aristotle. This patent humbles itself before the secret of epic storytelling. This patent does not drive down Sunset in a Ferrari, as fanboys and failed producers do, screaming and hyping their lackluster creations—lackluster movies based on video games, or lackluster video games based on movies—as exalted art; but rather this invention simply states that all epic story derives for living for, speaking for, and sometimes dying for higher ideals. Such is the way it has ever been, and will always be; and this invention will exalt a higher realm of games and gaming by returning this central tenet to modern art, leading with Character and Plot based on Virtue as did Aristotle, and introducing all these soulful, sacred, moral agents in the realm of video games.

This present invention is penned in the context that this is going to sound crazy to all the fanboy experts, and counter their expert fanboy opinions, but in contemplating story in the realm of video games, why not turn to the greatest stories ever written—Homer, Shakespeare, and the Bible? I understand that we live in a declining fiatocracy, but get over it. This fiatocracy won't be around forever, and someday people will be free to act upon their desire to play games founded upon classical ideals and idealism, wherein ideas have consequences, and where they can engage in meaningful gameplay, such as protecting and defending the Constitution, and protecting the unborn and borders of an empire, instead of fighting random fiat monsters on foreign shores. I know that many fanboys insist that games should have no intellectual content, and that they should merely exist to satiate the fanboy fantasies of hiring and killing hookers, jacking cars, killing cops and civilians, and doing drugs, and that is fine and good for their era and realm of gaming. But the times, they are a changin'. Surely, as we live in an open-ended world with freedom, the fiat fanboys ought stop opposing exalted games with classical soul and spirit. They can keep their close-minded, conservative ways—that is fine by us—but the world will know a renaissance in classical liberalism in the realm of video games, wherein one gets to battle for the US Constitution—the one that the Founding Fathers wrote, and not the one interpreted by the fiatocracy's feminized/dumbed-down fanboys.

A New Realm of Exalted Gaming

The Autumn Rangers Video Game Engine

Imagine the Autumn Rangers video game—a game where being in love was as important as fighting in battle, just as it was in Homer's Odyssey, Braveheart, and 300. Imagine a game which let you speak out for liberty's ideals before fighting for the US Constitution, as did the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and the countless brave men and women in uniform. Imagine a game which let you defend the spirit of The Declaration of Independence in word and deed, and which united the internal dramatic action and external conflict en route to Aristotle's third act—the thundering, epic showdown.

Imagine a renaissance in games exalted by classical, epic story and soul. And as “life imitates art,” as Oscar Wilde stated, imagine a cultural renaissance—imagine a novel form of video games that had a positive, exalted influence on the culture; as all epic art ever has, from The Iliad to The Odyssey, from Shakespeare to the Bible. “They all fall away, one by one,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “until one is left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” Imagine a game which allowed one to fight for Virgil's poetry, Achille's Honor, Odysseus's Penelope, and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.—The Declaration of Independence

Imagine the Autumn Rangers video game—a game where one had to trek through hell to be reunited with Beatrice, as did Dante in The Inferno; and wherein one's fiance was stolen, as in The Count of Monte Christo; along with one's technology, as in the 1968 Iron Man. Imagine a gameworld wherein ideas had consequences, and where although actions spoke louder than words, the pen was mightier than the sword. Imagine a game wherein the words—the mere words the player chose to speak—could exalt peace, avert wars, save lives, end oppression, and win freedom, as did Gandhi's words.

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love (like all the fanboys who are quite content to hire and kill hookers, but never love a real woman); it is the prerogative of the brave.—Mohandas Gandhi

Imagine a game which let one fight for the higher ideals and deliver justice in an epic showdown where the few stood against the many, as did Socrates in The Apology, Leonidas and his men in 300, and every lone rider at the end of every Western, be it Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars or Eminem in 8 mile. And imagine that after reuniting the family and facing down a posse of rifles with your .45 revolver, you could ultimately leave the gold behind, as did Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars—the first film in Sergio Leone's “The Man With No Name” trilogy which was based on the Japanese Samuri Film Yojimbo, shot in Spain, directed by an Italian who spoke no English, and which first launched Eastwood as an international star.

The present invention will foster video games in which the player could throw down their golden staff and call out the assembly for having no honor, as did Achilles in The Iliad, or throw down the Ten Commandments, as did Moses, when he found his people worshipping the golden calf, and reasoned that they were not yet ready for the far-higher value of the Law. Imagine that mere words could incite a people to fight for their freedom—eloquent, exalting words such as those penned by Publius in The Federalist, Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man, and Thomas Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence. Imagine that after a band of rebels won their freedom in the game, their leader could turn down the kingship that was offered them, as did General Washington.

The present invention will allow us to imagine and render a game where the soul of the stolen AI technology—APRIL—could only be saved by the codes on Ranger's ring, and where US Marine Ranger McCoy, after raising his right hand and swearing on the Bible to protect the Constitution, was ultimately protected and saved by folksinger Autumn Wests' faithful love and loyalty—her immortal, pristine soul; just as Odysseus was ultimately saved by Penelope, Dante by Beatrice, and Johnny Cash by June Carter.

The present invention will allow us to imagine and render a game wherein fighting for moral ideas at the lowest level had resounding and epic consequences. Imagine a game wherein saving New York and LA from nuclear devastation came down to the seemingly smallest actions between Autumn & Ranger—to the romance of their renaissance and the renaissance of their romance—for without Penelope's faithful dedication, Odysseus's long journey on home would have all been for naught; and without Beatrice, Dante would have been robbed of the exalted reason to walk through hell. Imagine a game wherein fighting for moral ideas at the lowest level had resounding and epic consequences.

The present invention will allow us to imagine and render a game in which Ranger could create a digital rights management system for Autumn as they drove cross country to save APRIL and resurrect her moral OS.

• The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;—The United States Constitution

The present invention will allow us to imagine and exalt a game wherein if Ranger's DRM software allowed Autumn to “further the progress of the useful arts” by allowing her to protect and profit from her art—to realize her Natural Constitutional Rights to own her creations, thus giving her incentives to create, and enriching all world with a renaissance, as she performed the classical ideals in the contemporary context, resurrecting that far higher, forgotten wealth of poetry mingled with epic idealism. For without classical ideals, love songs are not possible, and without living music, love can be read about but never truly known; and so it is that Autumn's music would remind us of the need for property rights; as much as Odysseus's actions in reclaiming his home from the false suitors.

The present invention will allow us to imagine and exalt a game wherein AI that exalted the classical moral premise in Plot and Character—that allowed the first person player to exalt in Honor and Integrity. Imagine an FPS that rendered the archetypal masculine and feminine—the Odysseus and Penelope, the Dante and Beatrice, the Hamlet and Ophelia—and like Zeus, saw to it that only those who treated strangers and beggars with common decency and respect ever prevailed. Imagine a video game that wore black like Johnny Cash:

• I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
• Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
• I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
• But is there because he's a victim of the times.
• I wear the black for those who never read,
• Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
• About the road to happiness through love and charity,
• Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.—Johnny Cash—The Man in Black . . .

And imagine a game that wore black like Hamlet, which brought to life the contrast between “the actions a man might play” and the reality of the deeper soul:

• HAMLET
• Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not ‘seems.’
• 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
• Nor customary suits of solemn black,
• Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
• No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
• Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
• Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
• That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
• For they are actions that a man might play:
• But I have that within which passeth show;
• These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

The present invention will allow us to imagine and exalt a video game that followed The Hero's Journey; which called the protagonist to adventure—which beckoned them with a higher calling, and rewarded them for risking all to heed it and serve a higher cause. Imagine a game that inspired the player to venture forth in rendering their ideals real—to press on regardless—mentoring them in taking the high road and walking the straight and narrow, always reminding them that “there is a difference between knowing the path and walking it,” just as there is a difference between night and day, and proposed word and rendered deed.

Imagine a game wherein the protagonist was a man of suffering and pain—carrying a great burden like Sam and Frodo, as the very name Odysseus implies “man of woe and pain.” Imagine a game where one could fight for the classical economic precepts in word and deed, and witness them rendered real in the living world. Imagine fighting Orwellian groupthink and freeing the innovator and inventor from the bureaucracy's shackles; and imagine that if one did not succeed in standing for truth and liberty at the game's crossroads, “The Road to Serfdom” would be taken, accompanied by “The End of Truth,” “The Worst Getting on Top,” and the eventual decline of freedom and liberty.

The present invention could foster a video game which brought the ideals of classical economists to life; so that we might learn what happens in a virtual world when we ignore Adam Smith, F. A. Hayek, and Ludwig Von Mises, as well as when we ignore those far more fundamental economists—Socrates and the prophets of the Judeo Christian Heritage. For one cannot serve two masters, and what does it profit one to gain the world and lose their soul? And with the same courage that Achilles took to battle, imagine a game which allowed you to address the Athenian jury as did Socrates, with a basic treatise on economics that he delivered knowing that it would bring about his death:

“For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.”—The Apology

The present invention would afford games that allowed people to act on Socrates' epic, classic ideals, as well as exalt them, and even defend Socrates. The present invention would afford games which called upon the player to match exalted word with exalted deed; and rendered the consequences—both dire and grand—in gameworlds that diverged depending on the chosen path, ending definitively with either with tyranny, oppression, and persecution for those who failed to embody classical ideals our Founding Fathers adhered to; or with freedom, liberty, and justice for those who succeeded in serving the higher cause. Action and dialogue trees could be mapped directly onto historical events such as the American Revolution or onto epic literature such as The Odyssey, and by correctly choosing to speak Odysseus's words, and partake in his exalted, cunning actions, one would be rewarded with faithful Penelope—with the epic poetry's exaltation of the home and family—of private property and the triumph of the hero, owner, and creator over the false managerial suitors living off Odysseus's estate and Autumn's music. And by diverging from Odysseus's words and deeds, the player would fail, as so many of our present-day institutions are—institutions which have chosen to hedge against the great wisdom of the Great Books and Classics, and which are reaping the consequences, cashing out on our vast accumulated cultural wealth built upon words matched by epic deeds—constructed upon the solid rock of honor and integrity, and founded upon treasures that moth and rust cannot corrupt, and thieves cannot steal. The player who gave in to short-term temptations would fail by selling trust, honor, integrity, civility, and marriage on down the river for short-term gains, as they bankrupt a nation, both spiritually and monetarily.

But too, the players who failed would leave billions of dollars of long-term wealth on the table for the bold and innovative players who went against the conventional wisdom, and who yet believed in exalting the higher ideals over the bottom line; who, like Odysseus, put off the short-term temptations of the Sirens and Lotus Eaters for those far greater precepts belonging to Penelope, the home, and family. So it is that this novel gameworld would be far more realistic than the supposedly open-ended world of Grand Theft Auto where one can steal cars, hire and kill prostitutes, shoot innocent cops and civilians, but never exalt a renaissance. Vast opportunities would exist in this game world for the rising generation to exalt renaissances on Wall Street and Main Street; in Hollywood and the Heartland, in films, books, movies, software, and games endowed with classic, epic soul; just as vast opportunities exist in real life for all those Autumns and Rangers—all those Autumn Rangers who venture boldly into the romance of the fall and autumn's burning leaves. For spring shall soon follow.

And so it is that tomorrow's game designers ought begin by heeding Martin Luther King Jr.'s words:

• If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.—M L K

There is a rising demand for exalted games that this present invention would foster; and for technologies that allow artists to protect and profit from their creations—technology endowed and infused with the classical soul, just as there is a rising demand for exalted art, film, literature, classes, and institutions. A fellowship is forming to deliver such entities, prepared to back words with deeds, just as Autumn and Ranger heed Leonardo da Vinci's advice in the Autumn Rangers novel, film, and video game.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough—we must do.—Leonardo da Vinci

Further Ramifications of Invention: Ideas have Consequences in Epic Literature, Epic Art, and Epic Life.

The present invention will foster a new breed of epic games wherein ideas have consequences. The mark of epic literature has ever been characters who backed words with deeds. The mark of today's financial leaders is profiting by saying one thing and doing another. Thus they finance the deconstruction of the great books and classics, alongside characterless literature and characterless video games such as GTA; so as to destroy the epic soul throughout all entirety, and transform every last profession and institution, founded to the serve the higher ideals; into a monetized business serving their dumbed-down, materialistic, crass bottom line. So it is that irony serves postmodern literature and postmodern financiers; and just as they proclaim that Dave Eggers', Tucker Max's, and Joyce Carol Oates' characterless, pornified writings are higher art; they proclaim that your pension is now their pension; and that your savings are now their savings; and that your earnings are now the government's, and that abortion is in the Constitution, as well as the authorization of the president to launch wars and for a private cartel of banks to print money. Modern fiat education, which constantly favors deceit, marketing, deception, and deconstruction, has become a sieve that only allows the worst to get on top. So, so many are but useful idiots in the fiatocracy's empire, blind to the fact that their success is founded upon the deconstruction, decadence, and demolition of classical, epic ideals/

For quite some time reading has been a disadvantage, as when you quote the great books and classics, people either give you blank stares or make a mental note to shun and exclude you from both feminist and fanboy planning sessions for world domination. But ultimately, the immortal soul wins in this game of art. The epic soul may have to forgo the luxuries bought by printing money and pilfering pensions, but its reward is everlasting, epic poetry. All men must choose which masters to serve in this world, and thus a video game with more than one master would be far superior to GTA. For in Grand Theft Auto, one cannot serve God, and in GOW one cannot reach out to the soul of a monster via word; for there is no soul.

The present invention allows us to imagine that a prostitute in Grand Theft Auto stepped forth to exalt the player's soul. Imagine if she spoke words of wisdom—words that you would never hear if you killed her. Imagine that by killing the prostitute, the secret to the higher way world would be lost. Imagine if the prostitute was the one who knew the fiatocracy's deeper intent, and that by talking and listening to her, one would embark on the higher path in the game. And that by killing her, that higher path would be forever lost. The present invention would afford this new character type—this novel npc. Imagine if she could exalt your soul and remind you of a higher purpose. Imagine if she could inspire you to a higher victory in the game world. Imagine if a female character could exalt you to live for, and die for, the United States Constitution, as did Penelope, Beatrice, and Autumn Wests. Today no game offers a woman with a pristine soul, exalted ideals, and profound ideas.

In all the contemporary and prior art of games and video games, never will you hear an in game character quoting Abraham Lincoln, Ron Paul, the Founding Fathers, nor Jesus, nor Socrates. In contemplating story and soul, the last place a fanboy will ever look is towards the masters—the very foundations of epic story and classical soul—Socrates and Jesus, and Shakespeare and Dante. Thus vast, resounding opportunities exist. The present invention will afford such game characters—male or female characters which will say things such as “what does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?” Upon hearing the scripture, the player will have to make a decision—whether to serve short-term gratification, or live for higher ideals. No contemporary game offers this choice; though many fanboys will argue that they do, as they were raised by single moms who never taught them the manly difference between right and wrong, between hype and truth, between night and day, between talking and doing, between empty promises and concrete actions, between comic books and The Great Books of the Epic Soul. Only real, epic men and exalted women will be able to prevail and win in the novel game that this invention would afford, and thus it would be an exalting and entertaining form of education.

Suppose that the hooker's exalted wisdom and grace is the only ticket to the greater, higher hero's journey, and thus the elixir and ultimate boone. If the player ignores the hooker, or merely uses her, and/or kills her, the higher path will be forever lost. Both Zeus and the Judeo Christian God work in mysterious ways, and both protect strangers and beggars and grant the same Natural Rights to all, so who is to write off a hooker, but for the feminized fanboy who gleefully murders her? Oftentimes, Athena would come down and impart wisdom in disguise, so again, who would write off a hooker? I'll tell you who—fanboy game developers who are leaving vast opportunities on the table for us to exalt games to higher levels of epic, classical art. Listen to all of Will Wright's lectures, and he presents the same dismal, fanboy perspective—we're all just a bunch of dust ultimately evolved from spores in a random universe. Well, such a view leaves out the exalted reality of the human soul and spirit, and again, billions of dollars are being left on the table by fanboy designers who never consider the role of morality, nor Zeus, nor the Judeo Christian spirit, in any of their games.

Hollywood producers, professors, university administrators, and fanboys generally do not read, and they are paid quite handsomely in fiat dollars not to read. The more they don't read, the faster the fiat cash keeps right on flowing as they build bureaucracies upon buzzwords; inspiring them to read less and shout their slogans louder and louder, calling on us to buy their bigger, better, more badass games which we'll need buckets for all the blood. Quoting the Great Books and Classics is deemed as impolite and an affront to the finer fanboy and Hollywood producer sensibilities, as they just want to shoot monsters both in their video games and real men, women, and children on far-off, foreign shores. Never do they wish to engage nor exalt the soul of the monster, nor engage their own souls, nor look below the surface towards that higher form of action and art—dramatic action and dramatic art. So their bestselling videogames have high pixel count douchebag thugs and prostitutes, just like the fine men and women our leading law schools and MBA programs are graduating to go forth and transfer wealth via the biggest bluff in the history of mankind—the fiat dollar which bails out the banks and inflates gas and food prices for all the rest. So it is that all the experts will oppose this present invention; and so it is, that like Hamlet and Odysseus, like John Wayne and the Man With No Name, we have a showdown coming; where games will finally be exalted to the realm of higher art, and such a showdown would be an excellent addition to a novel form of video games and gaming. For thousands of years the pagans engaged in superficial rituals and sculpted idols, until Jesus and the Biblical Prophets stepped forth to grant da Vinci and Michelangelo the soul that made their works immortal. So too shall this present invention exalt video games to new heights—not by abolishing the law of the prophets, but by fulfilling it.

FURTHER OBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES OF INVENTION

The present invention would inspire entire new realms of research and institutions, of movies, films, and video games, all based on classical idealism and ideals.

The Hero's Journey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology

CREATE

The Center for Renaissance Entrepreneurship, Art, Technology, and Economics

Ideals in Innovation

The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to fight for the following:

• • For classical learning I have ever been a zealous advocate.—Thomas Jefferson
  • I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough—we must do.—Leonardo da Vinci
  • All men whom the higher Nature has imbued with a love of truth should feel impelled to work for the benefit of future generations, whom they will thereby enrich just as they themselves have been enriched by the labors of their ancestors.—Dante
  • He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means of his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens.—Adam Smith
  • If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.—Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • So dream your own dreams, but act on them too. Action, always action is required on the ever-dangerous odyssey that each of our lives must follow. Be good human beings. Respect tradition and study the great thinkers of our heritage.—John C. Bogle, Founder and Former CEO of Vanguard
  • This country was founded upon the principle that a new economy must be formed, one in which only the efforts and responsibilities undertaken by individuals would determine their future. This freedom of self-determination spawned an extraordinary culture of work . . . Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, for example, both expressed their belief in a national economy centered on appreciation, diffusion, and implementation of technology.—The Entrepreneurial Imperative, Carl J. Schramm, President and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation

The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to fight for the following ideals:

I. Forming the Fellowship

• • A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.—Joseph Campbell
    • From this day to the ending of the world,
    • But we in it shall be remember'd;
    • We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    • For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    • Shall be my brother . . .
      • Henry V, William Shakespeare

Opportunity abounds to perform the classical ideals in the contemporary context. The Great Books have ever been the best long-term investment; but one does not buy in by reading alone—one must take action in rendering the classical ideals real in living ventures. Such are the basic tenets of the Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology class and The Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival: names that have combined to title my upcoming book: The Hero's Journey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology.

I hope these small ventures can help exalt a renaissance in classic American idealism and serve student demand for a classical liberal arts education—a most valuable asset in any endeavor. The University, in both teaching and research, must support classic entrepreneurship founded upon principled service—that primary mechanism by which long-term wealth is generated, which grants the risk-taker, investor, and innovator their natural reward. The first HJEF website describes the spirit with:

• • Imagine video games with plots, characters, and Epic Storytelling. Imagine contemporary novels and movies with the same—with heroes and heroines—with Audrey Hepburns and Sergio Leones; whence our own John Wayne and Man with No Name ride into town for the showdown where story trumps spectacle, where Beatrice exalts Dante, and Odysseus sails on home to Penelope. Imagine software systems and startups that actually pay the artists and talent—the filmmakers, models, photographers, and bands. Imagine new classes/research programs/ventures supporting all this.—http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org

The first festival was grateful for a most eloquent foundational keynote: Vanguard. Saga of Heroes, delivered by John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group. Vanguard, which navigated on out towards superior returns by the ideals of classical antiquity—honor, integrity, “the relentless rules of humble arithmetic,” and character—represents one of Wall Street's largest and most revered fleets, with millions of clients and thousands of crewmembers; and I would argue that there is even greater wealth to be found in Bogle's books and speeches. All AE&T classes begin by reading Bogle's The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism alongside Homer's Odyssey, and all HJEF panelists get copies of both tomes. And if supply ever reaches demand, all students will be afforded the opportunity to ride with these works—these thundering calls to adventure—on towards renaissances of their own making.

A second inspirational keynote on the importance of classical ideals soon followed—this time from William Fay, executive producer at Legendary Pictures, which has brought us timeless blockbusters including The Patriot, Independence Day, and Batman. Mr. Fay told the story behind the success of 300. The film leveraged cutting-edge technology to artistically render a classic story, first recounted by Herodotus circa 450 BC. The studio took a risk and shot an outdoor action-adventure film—with tens of thousands of Greek and Persian soldiers, naval fleets, and epic battles—entirely indoors on a soundstage. They produced the epic at half the usual cost, and it went on to break boxoffice records. Fay, who is currently producing Milton's Paradise Lost, was quick to credit 300's success to Zack Snyder's visionary direction and Frank Miller's original vision of the classic epic. There is an art to the science of producing blockbuster after blockbuster—to marrying art and commerce and emerging with art—for as the poet Robert Frost said, “nothing is quite honest that is not commercial. Mind you that I don't put it that everything commercial is honest.” 300 recounts the true story of the few fighting against the many for freedom, as 300 Spartans, lead by King Leonidas stood their ground at Thermopylae, choosing, as free men, to “die on their feet rather than live on their knees.” Nobel Laureate author William Golding wrote, “A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.”

There is indeed a lot to be grateful for, including Carl Schramm's definitive and inspirational words on classic entrepreneurship delivered with eloquence and good humor in his books and speeches; and generous support from the Kauffman Foundation, UNC Chapel Hill, and Pepperdine University for AE&T—support that was initiated by the vision of Judith Cone and Desiree Vargas. I'm grateful for Vice Chancellor Mike Warder's passion, leadership, and conversations on Battle, The Odyssey, and Moby Dick, for the inspirational and entrepreneurial students who now run their own record labels and fashion lines, and who have sold their bottled-water companies for $2,000,000. And where would AE&T be without the fellowship of pioneering “arts entrepreneurship” colleagues including Gary Beckman, Molly Lavik, Cyril Morong, Kevin Woelfel? I'm grateful for Ewing Marion Kauffman and George Pepperdine, whose entrepreneurship and generosity can best be thanked by humbly embodying their principles in continued entrepreneurship and future generosity.

Not long ago I heard Carl Schramm quote Sir Francis Bacon in a speech—“Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man,” and the HJEF bookstore is filled every year with the books ranging from Frank Miller's 300 to Leonardo: Art and Science by Carl Pedrelli. Artistic entrepreneurs Flint Dille and John Zuur joined us with the current #1 book on video game design, edited by Skip Press—writer, speaker, and author of definitive books on the state of the industry including The Ultimate Writer's Guide to Hollywood. Skip kicked off this year's festival with his “Renaissance Man's” lecture, spanning science and mythology. Flint and John's panel delivered most practical advice as they recounted stories from the industry's frontlines, where they are defining and exalting a novel art form. Dille lent his name to the storyteller Spartan in 300—Dilios; and he and John have won multiple awards as the force behind too many AAA projects to list here, including the original Transformers and The Chronicles of Riddick. They're developing the upcoming Sin City game which explores the themes of good and evil as set forth in Dante's Inferno.

The common thread of the HJEF speakers has been a humor and humility matching their accomplishments, their can-do (and have-done) spirits, and selfless mentorship—I have heard great things from attendees who have contacted the speakers beyond the festivals. And last, but not least, the students and I are grateful for those spirits who rendered ideals real in those enduring texts; who although separated by oceans and thousands of years, yet ride united on towards eternity, from Homer on down. Such are the mentors and professors—such are the fellow crewmembers—of the proposed Center for Renaissance Arts, Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Economics (CREATE). The present invention would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for the following ideals and ideas, which would have exalted consequences:

II. The Ordinary World & CREATE's Founding Principles

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.—Thomas Jefferson

• • Go forth and tell them all, “Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end.”—Odysseus, Homer's Odyssey

Our Founding Fathers recognized that there is no greater investment than classical ideals, and contemporary spirits such as Jack Bogle have agreed in word and deed—in speeches and books including The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism and Character Counts, and in the maverick Vanguard Group, which has served millions with superior returns on their investments via its adherence to principle, common sense, and character. Bogle's character in particular, for as Emerson noted, “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” Bogle humbly describes his occupation,

• • But even as I disclaim the credentials of the hero, of the leader, of the business manager, and even of the entrepreneur, I shamelessly proclaim my credentials as an idealist. Even more, I am an idealist who revels in the values of the Enlightenment and holds high his admiration for the brilliance and the character of the great thinkers, great doers, and great adventurers of the 18th century, men (as it happens, in particular our nation's Founding Fathers) who give birth to our modern world.—John C. Bogle, Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, 2007 HJEF

When one reads the Great Books, one might conclude that it's all already been said and done—that the ideals have already been rendered by the masters and we can all go on home now; but in looking at the world, it oft seems we have yet to begin. Yes—we must perpetually perform the classical ideals in the contemporary context, and that is exactly what this present video game does.

For “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” and time and again we find ourselves at the beginning of The Odyssey and Hamlet, with our homes out of order and our fathers displaced; and so too would the present invention foster video games wherein our fathers have been displaced, echoing this profound, classics, exalted story. Hamlet—the reluctant hero—laments, “How all occasions do inform against me,” and “O' cursed spite, that I was ever born to set it right.” 'Tis a “world out of joint” where virtue is “more honor'd in the breach than in the observance,” with financial engineering—the transfer of wealth—trumping physical engineering and entrepreneurship—the creation of wealth. Bogle describes our “ordinary world:”

What caused the mutation from virtuous circle to vicious circle? It's easy to call it a failure of character, a triumph of hubris and greed over honesty and integrity. And it's even easier to lay it all to “just a few bad apples.” But while only a tiny minority of our business and financial leaders have been implicated in criminal behavior, I'm afraid that the barrel itself—the very structure that holds all those apples—is bad. While that may seem a harsh indictment, I believe it is a fair one . . . . It is now crystal-clear that our capitalistic system—as all systems sometimes do—has experienced a profound failure, a failure with a whole variety of root causes, each interacting and reinforcing the other: The stock market mania, driven by the idea that we were in a New Era; the notion that our corporations were trees that could grow not only to the sky but beyond; the rise of the imperial chief executive officer; the failure of our gatekeepers—those auditors, regulators, legislators, and boards of directors who forgot to whom they owed their loyalty—the change in our financial institutions from being stock owners to being stock traders; the hype of Wall Street's stock promoters; the frenzied excitement of the media; and of course the eager and sometimes greedy members of the investing public, reveling in the easy wealth that seemed like a cornucopia, at least while it lasted. There is plenty of blame to go around. But even as it drove stock prices up, this happy conspiracy among all of the interested parties drove business standards down. Yes, the victory of investors in the great bull market had a thousand fathers. But the defeat in the great bear market that followed seems to be an orphan.—What Went Wrong in Corporate America? Remarks by John C. Bogle, Founder and Former Chairman, The Vanguard Group http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20030224.html

The present invention, which would foster video games exlalting these ideals by allowing one to battle for them in word and deed, would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for the following ideals and ideas, which would have exalted consequences.

So we ask, from where did this “failure of character, a triumph of hubris and greed over honesty and integrity” derive? Where did this brave new generation of managers and accountants come from? From our universities. From our law schools and business schools. And just what are we teaching them? Let the titles of the following books begin to address that question:

• • Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education, by Harry R. Lewis (former Harvard Dean)
  • The Western Canon, (opens with An Elegy for the Canon) by Harold Bloom (Yale professor, author, critic)
  • Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom by Victor Davis Hanson (recipient of the Award for Excellence in Teaching, the top award in the country for teaching in the field of classics from the American Philological Association) and John Heath
  • Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age by Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, and Bruce S. Thornton
  • Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe: Toward the Revival of Higher Education by Jeffrey Hart (Columbia professor)
  • The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom (University of Chicago professor)
  • From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (Hardcover), by Jacques Barzun
  • Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy
  • Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Our Students Learn and Why They Should be Learning More & Are Colleges Failing? by Derek Bok, former President of Harvard University

The remainder of the list of titles, spanning every aspect of the “rotten barrel” of cultural decline; from business, to marriage, to government, to entertainment, would consume the entire length of this paper. Aristotle said, “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence,” and is it any wonder that when the classics are removed from education, the world is impoverished? Video games lack epic story and soul as films invert Aristotle's Poetics, placing spectacle first and character and plot last; and as Oscar Wilde reminds us, “life imitates art.” Well, this present invention would place plot and character first, and spectacle last in video games, countering common fanboy opinion. The dumbing down knows no bounds, and the present invention would foster video games that allowed players to argue and reason with professors, in word and deed:

• • Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining.—Harold Bloom, Dumbing Down American Readers, LA Times, Sep. 24, 2003

Screenwriting teacher Robert McKee quotes the great poet Yeats, in describing the postmodernized Hollywood.

• • Flawed and forced storytelling is forced to substitute spectacle for substance, trickery for truth. Weak stories, desperate to hold audience attention, degenerate into multimillion-dollar razzle-dazzle demo reels. In Hollywood imagery becomes more and more extravagant, in Europe more and more decorative. The behavior of actors becomes more histrionic, more and more lewd, more and more violent. Music and sound effects become increasingly tumultuous. The total effect transnudes into the grotesque. A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society. If not, as Yeats warned, ‘ . . . the center cannot hold.’—Robert Mckee, Story

The present invention, which would foster video games exlalting these ideals by allowing one to battle for them in word and deed, would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for the following ideals and ideas, which would have exalted consequences.

I'll keep repeating Aristotle—“when storytelling declines, the result is decadence,” as art is culture's flagship. The present invention would allow us to exalt Aristotle, and finally render video games that are classical, epic art. As society forgets to laud the greater beauty of the soul in its art, character and integrity—freedom's foundations—become unfashionable. And so, losing trust in the moral soul, whose center no longer holds, society begins to trade freedom for security; and bureaucracies capitalize on this—growing to oppose the truth and freedom that is necessary for the natural, long-term wealth generation that classic capitalism affords. The late Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman made note of this in the introduction to the late Nobel Laureate economist F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom:

• • I said at the outset that “in some ways” the message of this book “is even more relevant to the United States today than it was when it created a sensation . . . half a century ago.” Intellectual opinion then was far more hostile to its theme than it appears to be now, but practice conformed to it far more than it does today. Government in the post World War II period was smaller and less intrusive than it is today. Johnson's Great Society programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and Bush's Clean Air and Americans with Disabilities Acts, were all still ahead, let alone the numerous other extensions of government that Reagan was only able to slow down, not reverse, in his eight years in office. Total government spending—federal, state, and local—in the United States has gone from 25 percent of national income in 1950 to nearly 45 percent in 1993.—Milton Friedman
  • Nor is it just in government that bureaucracy grows, but in business too:
  • Over the past century, a gradual move from owner's capitalism—providing the lion's share of the rewards of investment to those who put up their own money and risk their own capital—has culminated in an extreme version of manager's capitalism—providing vastly disproportionate rewards to those whom we have trusted to manage their enterprises in the interests of their owners.—John C. Bogle, Battle for The Soul of Capitalism

The present novel invention, which would foster video games exalting these ideals by allowing one to battle for them in word and deed, and oppose the growth of the wealth-transferring state and corporate bureaucracy, battling both of them in word and deed, would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for classical, epic, exalted ideals and ideas, in thought, word, and action, which would have exalted consequences.

Carl Schramm weighs in regarding the university's recent evolution; which although oft being founded by and benefiting greatly from entrepreneurs, now oft opposes to the classic entrepreneurial spirit. Once again, the bureaucracy grows:

• • Our colleges, universities, and business schools should be at the heart of entrepreneurial capitalism as the biggest contributors to the changing economic landscape. But they are not. They have been taken off course by: Graduating degreed people who are not educated and who are certainly not as prepared as the need to be to contribute; Becoming too bureaucratic, and bureaucracy is the antithesis to entrepreneurial capitalism; Confusion about their mission and; The fact that they don't even teach very well . . . . Instead of aiding economic change, they are in many cases a hindrance, which is one of the greatest ironies of our age . . . . For universities to shift away from a broad, basic liberal education that includes grounding in mathematics and science threatens the production of the human talent needed to sustain the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ultimately, it will result in the production of young adults incapable of being creative and innovative contributors to society . . . . The university is also at risk of failing to play its central role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem because of the enormous expansion of its bureaucracy and overhead expenses. The problem here is multifold . . . .—Carl Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative, p. 121-133

The above noted authors hail from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and the University of Chicago; they include a former Harvard president and dean, top-ranked classics and screenwriting teachers, the president of the world's largest foundation devoted to entrepreneurship, and the founder of Vanguard. They have all contributed immensely in the realm of letters and leadership, and in one way or another, they all lament the loss of epic story and soul; and the growth of soulless bureaucracy. Even Warren Buffet weighs in on the contemporary professoriate who, in Oscar Wilde's words, “know the price of everything and value of nothing:”

• • Buffett found it “extraordinary” that academics studied such things. They studied what was measurable, rather than what was meaningful. As a friend [Charlie Munger] said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail . . . [Buffett] was willing to give a lecture at Columbia, and did so every year or two, but refused to donate money to it. John C. Burton, the business school dean, said, “[Buffett] told me very frankly he didn't think education was enhanced by money and secondly he didn't think business schools were teaching the things he wanted to support. He was very hostile to the idea of efficient market research.” A stroll through the business section of the university bookstore suggested that a student could get an MBA at Columbia without ever hearing the names Graham and Dodd, and without even a faint exposure to value investing . . . . “We have ‘professional’ investors, who manage many billions, to thank for most of this turmoil. Instead of focusing on what businesses will do in the years ahead, many prestigious money managers now focus on what they expect other money managers to do in the days ahead.”—Buffet: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein, p. 318-320

And Telemachus knows that he must soon defeat the suitors laying waste to his estate; as they arrogantly threaten him and tell him that his father—the mighty Odysseus—shall never return. A video game inspired by the present invention will allow Odysseus to return, for Odysseus does return, and Bogle calls on the students to “hold high your idealism and your values. Remember always that even one person can make a difference. And do your part to begin the world anew,” not only by investing for the long-term, but by investing for eternity, with a battle for the soul:

• • The human soul, as Thomas Aquinas defined it, is the ‘form of the body, the vital power animating, pervading, and shaping an individual from the moment of conception, drawing all the energies of life into a unity.’ In our temporal world, the soul of capitalism is the vital power that has animated, pervaded, and shaped our economic system, drawing all of its energies into a unity. In this sense, it is no overstatement to describe the effort we must make to return the system to its proud roots with these words: the battle to restore the soul of capitalism.—Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

The present novel invention, which would foster video games exalting these ideals by allowing one to battle for them in word and deed, and oppose the growth of the wealth-transferring state and corporate bureaucracy, battling both of them in word and deed, would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for classical, epic, exalted ideals and ideas, in thought, word, and action, which would have exalted consequences.

So begins the artistic entrepreneur's story and the humble hero's journey; as an unyielding sense of “the way things ought to be” propels them beyond this fallen world and into the unknown, with naught but faith in their ideals. The video games inspired by the present invention will capture this spirit. They set out alone; knowing in their heart of hearts that Odysseus must return—that the simple laws of arithmetic must prevail—that justice must be rendered in that third act; even if popular opinion, tenure committees, hedge fund managers, and tyrants sometimes suppose otherwise. And so the threshold is crossed and obstacles overcome by the sheer force of the individual's character, which knows no other way, but to follow Plato's forms. And we live indebted to such souls. For the elixir that enriches us all is time and again delivered by that prophet who, although never known in their own home and oft exiled, yet returns on home after their apotheosis; whence they not only rendered their ideals, but became them, via action. The Founding Fathers recognized the value of the all-too-often persecuted prophet, and they gave him a Constitution which recognized his rights to say what he believed and own that which he created, along with the duty to speak those words which would defend that Constitution. From the iPod, to Windows, to the Civil Rights movement, to Vanguard, to Star Wars, to The Hero with a Thousand Faces—somewhere behind every useful, enduring entity stands a soul with an immutable vision.

Dante's ornate tomb is in Florence, but his bones remain exiled in Ravenna. He was banished from Florence with the threat of being burned at the stake should he ever return, and he wrote The Divine Comedy in exile, placing those who exiled him in his Inferno, in perhaps literature's greatest instance of “poetic” justice. “Honour the most exalted poet,” is etched on his empty tomb in Florence, followed by, “his spirit, which had left us, returns.” Moses goes off alone into the wilderness and on up a mountain—he skips the university meetings discussing tuition (student debt) increases and the removal of classical references from university websites—he skips the law review luncheons and business plan and stock-picking competitions; and he returns on home with the Ten Commandments that underlie our natural rights and the American spirit: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The present novel invention, which would foster video games exalting Dante's ideals by allowing one to battle for them in word and deed, and oppose the growth of the wealth-transferring state and corporate bureaucracy, battling both of them in word and deed, would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for classical, epic, exalted ideals and ideas, in thought, word, and action, which would have exalted consequences.

Entrepreneurial education requires that we respect both the past masters' exaltation of principle and the student's unique dreams by which they, like the Knights of Arthurian Legend, must find their own unique path through the forest in pursuit of that higher wealth. Novel video games, inspired by this invention, would serve as means and methods for entrepreneurial education, exalting the wealth of higher quests. Such wealth was described by the economist Joseph Schumpeter—“the stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail.” Bogle joins Schumpeter in elaborating on the classic definition of entrepreneurship:

• • In today's grandiose era of capitalism, the word “entrepreneur” has come to be commonly associated with those who are motivated to create new enterprises largely by the desire for personal wealth or even greed. But at its best, entrepreneurship entails something far more important than mere money. Heed the words of the great Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to recognize entrepreneurship as the vital force that drives economic growth. In his Theory of Economic Development, written nearly a century ago, Schumpeter dismissed material and monetary gain as the prime mover of the entrepreneur, finding motivations like these to be far more powerful: (1) “The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity,” and (2) “The will to conquer, the impulse to fight . . . to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself.”
  • That's the way it was in 18th century America, at least in the case of Benjamin Franklin. For Franklin, fairly described as “America's First Entrepreneur,” the getting of money was always a means to an end, not an end in itself. The enterprises he created were designed for the public weal, not for his personal profit. When Franklin joined with his colleagues in founding The Philadelphia Contributionship in 1752, it was a mutual company owned by its policyholders. This combination of ownership and service—creating a true mutuality of interest between the owners of a firm and its managers—was not then, nor is it now, the common mode of business organization, but The Contributionship has thrived to this day.
  • Franklin also founded a library, an academy and college, a hospital, and a learned society, all for the benefit of his community. Not bad! His inventions followed the same philosophy. He made no attempt to patent the lightning rod for his own profit; and he declined the offer for a patent on the “Franklin stove” that revolutionized the efficiency of home heating, with great benefit to the public at large.—Bogle, Vanguard, Saga of Heroe, http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20070227.htm

And Bogle calls upon the students to not only believe in their ideals and dreams—the surest ticket to entrepreneurship's journey—but to follow them:

• • To each of you, with so much—for you students, nearly all—of your own odyssey lying before you, unknown, this chronicle of my own past may well be irrelevant. Our task is to live, not the lives of others, but the lives of our own. But wherever you are on your own journey, I know it holds the promise of being an exciting and rewarding one, if only you remain “strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”—Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Idealism offers great job security, I tell the students, as the world has never known a shortage of work for idealists, and video games inspired by this present invention shall embody this. Entrepreneurship—owning one's destiny and creating enduring meaning and long-term wealth via useful goods and services—via ideals in innovation—is a great economic decision, and the present invention will inspire games that reward players for rendering classical ideals real in action in the gameworld. Building and owning businesses via thrift and industry, one small step at a time in the gameworld—making oneself of use to the world in the gameworld—is the best defense against inflation and deflation, bubbles and recessions, the bureaucracy's insatiable, taxing, and counterproductive transfer of wealth to itself and risk to the worker, creator, and investor; and the all-too-common pilfering of 401ks and pensions. Novel video games, implied by this invention, will teach the students to take stock in their passions and full ownership of their lives by investing precious time's equity into their dreams—for such treasures rust cannot tarnish and thieves cannot steal. Emerson tells the students they would be wise to marry entrepreneurial endeavors to principle—to build their ventures on the solid foundations of a classical liberal arts education, and the present invention will teach these ideals via novel video games:

• • Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss. As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.—R. W. Emerson

Carl Schramm calls on the university to better serve the students with entrepreneurship's core principles and values, while also characterizing societal transformations addressed in Bogle's Battle—the exaltation of the bottom line over principle's higher ideals and the transformation of professions into businesses:

• • Universities create ideas—intellectual property—that fuel the continued growth and development of the economy. But they could do so much more. They could also transmit the values that would help the students understand how important their role is in building wealth for society . . . . Business schools must also change radically. The canon of what they teach is thin . . . what is being taught is a far cry from Joseph Wharton's vision when he funded the first business school. Wharton pictured a school that would prepare students for the “profession of business.” They would graduate as well-rounded managers who would serve a dynamic economy . . . Wharton's vision, however, underwent radical changes decades ago when graduate business training was reconceived as an education in quantitative thinking. The MBA was deprofessionalized and made into a kind of financial engineering degree . . . .—Carl Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative, p. 147-148

The present novel invention, which would foster video games exalting these ideals by allowing one to battle for them in word and deed, and oppose the growth of the wealth-transferring state and corporate bureaucracy, battling both in word and deed, would be researched and developed at CREATE, thusly leading to expanded, enhanced, and novel commercial and educational opportunities. The present invention would begin in the ordinary world, and follow the hero's journey in allowing one to battle for classical, epic, exalted ideals and ideas, in thought, word, and action, which would have exalted consequences, even if it means taking on university administrations in the game world.

Bogle characterizes the cultural transformations—“Once a profession with elements of business, mutual funds became a business with elements of profession.” And the rest, as they say, is history. All across the board, professions with elements of business were transformed into businesses with professional facades; as MBAs and JDs, degrees earned by mastering case studies and temporal opinions instead of the foundational Greats and Principle, were wielded as trump cards. They trumped honor, integrity, the inventor's and investor's rightful ownership, character, and hard work. Even the institution of marriage, based on a simple precept, “what God has joined together, let not man put asunder,” was transformed into a profitable business by the divorce industry, which profits little from marriage's exaltation, and entirely from its destruction. The optimist might state that the glass is yet half-full, with only a 50% divorce rate, but if one out of every two flights crashed, would you still fly? A second optimist might state that the crash rate has gone down, now that people don't fly anymore.

Cashing in on cultural capital benefits the first generation that does so, at the great and vast expanse of all ensuing generations. Converting marriage's covenant into a contract profits the aging boomers as men are lured down the aisle under false pretenses, only to be plundered by the divorce regime later on, as the majority of divorces are initiated by women. Eventually both men and women lose out, as do children, who are denied the priceless sanctity of a loving, caring home. And eventually marriage will fade away in the system, after its priceless cultural capital has been converted to mere cash to pay divorce lawyers and the corporate state which stipulates that both parents must now work to provide the home and security that just one working parent was capable of a few short generations ago.

There are short-term profits to be found in the soul's deconstruction that one generation might make off with; but which future generations will have to pay for with interest, and the present invention will exalt games that teach how ideas have consequences in this living context. The vast wealth of covenants was converted into mere contracts and the fine-print was leveraged to profit the few at the expense of the many, as the towers of commerce rose above yesterday's spires and steeples, taking us far, far away from the spirit of Washington's first Inaugural address which also mentions an “invisible hand,” and the present invention would foster video games that allow the player to have covenants, in the spirit of Washington's words:

• • Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own; nor those of my fellow—citizens at large, less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. And, in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none, under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence . . . the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes, which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world.—George Washington, Washington's First Inaugural Address

“Art imitates life,” Oscar Wilde wrote, and as character disappeared from modern literature; politicians and institutions followed suit, rendering Aristotle's maxim, which I will keep repeating until the renaissance in exalted video games that this patent implies, “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence.” Service to the client, patient, voter, and student was trumped by service to the firm, the HMO, earmarks, and administrative overhead; as the bottom line was exalted over the higher ideals. Entrepreneurship—that classic wellspring which operates from the ground up was transformed into its opposite—bureaucracy, which operates from the top down. All across the board the soul would no longer be sought—indeed it would become a hindrance. Brave new managers focused on money as the metric and measure of all value; but one cannot fathom the eternal with the temporal, and when one tries, one will mistakenly conclude the eternal does not exist. And where the soul is no longer actively sought, celebrated, fought for, and exalted in art and story; it soon becomes persecuted; just as the creator is oft criminalized by the bureaucracy. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to battle for the creators' natural, fundamental rights.

“Conscience makes cowards of us all,” Hamlet stated, and those who paused to reflect on the decline were oft left behind by the groupthink of the brave new managerial class and their accountants—all of whom forgot about that third act—all of whom counted on counting always accounting for everything that counts. And like the false suitors living off Odysseus's estate, they boldly proclaimed that Odysseus would never return. The present invention would foster video games where Odysseus would return.

Well, Einstein, Buffett, and Bogle, all of whom worked “relatively” well with numbers, disagree with the brave new mangers. Not only do they disagree, but they disagree so vehemently that their disagreement ought be included in Webster's definition of “disagree.” There yet hangs a sign in Einstein's original Princeton office: “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.” This theme pervades Bogle's works, including his classic speech: Don't Count On It! The Perils of Numeracy.”—http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/

Now if I were managing a university, or a law firm, or medical practice, or a trillion-dollar Wall Street Firm, or a business school, or even a hedge fund; I wouldn't be hedging against Bogle, Buffett, and Einstein. For Odysseus does come on home in that third act, and the freshman seminar is learning of his inevitable return, and they shall someday leverage this invention to create video games with that classical, epic third act. Warren Buffet also weighs in about the higher nature of accountability,

• • Both the ability and fidelity of managers have long needed monitoring. Indeed, nearly 2,000 years ago, Jesus Christ addressed this subject, speaking (Luke 16:2) approvingly of ‘a certain rich man’ who told his manager, ‘Give an account of they stewardship; for thou mayest no longer be steward.’ Accountability and stewardship withered in the last decade, and the behavorial norms of managers went down . . . —Warren Buffett

Einstein, perhaps the greatest scientist who ever lived, yet understood the limits of science, unlike the Nobel Laureates who ran Long Term Capital Management—“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love,” Einstein wrote, and, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” Like Buffet, Bogle, et al, he believed that the entrepreneurial premise of moral service did not derive from science, but from a more fundamental, and higher, source, which the present invention will acknowledge and instill in a novel realm of video games:

• • The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us westerners in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.—Albert Einstein

III. Ideas have Consequences (& Vast Value via Action both in Novel Video Games Implied by this Patent and Real Life)

Ben Franklin, in shaping what became the University of Pennsylvania, proposed that the school focus on “practical instruction.” It would not pursue learning and knowledge as ends in themselves, but would cultivate “an inclination, joined with an ability, to serve mankind, one's country, friends, and family.”—Carl Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative, p. 123

• • If the Wise be the happy man . . . he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of all academical emulation.—Thomas Jefferson

In contemplating entrepreneurial risk, we must never forget the greater context in which our risks—hanging out a shingle, taking out a loan to follow a dream or fund a patent or indie film, or even building a multi-billion-dollar venture—are relatively small. We must never forget the source of our greater wealth—the poets, prophets, philosophers, and soldiers who laid it all on the line for truth and freedom, who always perceived the greater risk to lie in not serving principle; who pressed on regardless, in Bogle's words, who lived the last line of Tennyson's Ulysses in all endeavors—To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. CREATE is reverently and resolutely dedicated to those precepts that although given freely by so many humble heroes, were all too often paid for with that “last full measure of devotion.” Such principles sufficed in the birth of Athens' and Jerusalem's exalted legacies, as they did at the Constitutional Convention; and they ought be good enough for the modern classroom, lab, and academic institution. Everyone who enjoys freedom must never forget the precepts held dear by the countless souls who bought and paid for that freedom. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to join the countless souls in fighting for classical, exalted ideals.

With the frugality and thrift Franklin emphasized, CREATE will host labs, classes, and festivals wherein the classical soul informs innovations and entrepreneurship in technology (strong property rights for creators), video games and film (epic, moral storytelling), academia (a return to the Greats), and business (built on America's foundational entrepreneurial principles). CREATE would focus on creator's entrepreneurship instead of aggregator's entrepreneurship, and emphasize generating wealth via physical engineering and innovation as opposed to financial engineering. All too often financial engineering merely transfers wealth in what Wall Street perceives as a zero-sum—or actually negative sum—game of capital allocation, where the counter-productive pursuit is to allocate hundreds of billions into one's pockets in the illusory act of beating the market average, which on average, by definition, cannot be beaten; no matter what PR firms they hire. Bogle writes,

• • Is all this thrashing around in the stock market productive for investors? Unequivocally, it is not. The returns investors actually earn are inevitably represented by the returns earned in the stock market itself, less the costs investors incur in earning those returns. The market is simply a gambling casino where investors as a whole try vainly to outpace the market. Beating the market is a zero-sum game, but only before costs are deducted. In the stock market casino, it is the croupiers who win. Bogle, The Wall Street Casino, http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp19990823.htm

The classical soul has been devalued in these postmodern times—it has been deconstructed and hedged against—sold short on every front—thusly creating vast opportunities. The stone which the builders cast away has become CREATE's keystone. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to join the countless souls in fighting for classical, exalted, epic soul; which has been devalued and ignored in the prior art.

CREATE is not seeking large amounts of capital, but simply enough for basic technology and books. The technology exists—video game engines and content management and DRM technologies abound; they're just missing classical soul, which costs nothing but the courage to fight for it and implement it. Large sums of money are not needed, as large sums all too often bolster bureaucracies that cannot afford classic entrepreneurship; and the exorbitant administrations cash out while creating unsustainable bureaucracies that must raise student tuition and demand government funding, redefining entrepreneurship and education as that which places students in debt, transfers wealth, and creates dependency; while exiling the innovative souls who don't quite fit into the game plan with their simple ideas of teaching the Greats and generating wealth via innovation and invention. Lowering student tuitions—placing the next generation in less debt—would work wonders on several fronts: defunding epic bureaucracies that teach the art of wealth transfer, while simultaneously allowing the young to hold on to their capital and credit; so that they can allocate it in entrepreneurship. For if we cannot trust students to allocate their own capital, can we trust administrations to?

• • Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.—Milton Friedman

By entrepreneurship students can engage in the art of wealth creation while funding their dreams and rendering their ideals real in the realm of the novel video games inspired by the present invention—as they get married and embark on that higher, yet ever-waning venture—starting families. CREATE seeks just enough capital to foster a fellowship, rooted in character and conviction, devoted to creating a cultural renaissance, both in novel gameworlds and beyond.

Joseph Campbell taught for thirty years at Sara Lawrence College, sans significant overhead and a Ph.D.; and his passionate work directly inspired the multi-billion-dollar Star Wars and Matrix franchises (talk about artistic entrepreneurship & technology!), while influencing countless movies, games, teachers, and writers; and enriching tens of thousands with “myths to live by” in these postmodern times. J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis lived humbly; spending lifetimes teaching and writing, creating entire empires with the simple tools of their trade that are mightier than the sword—the pen wielded by courageous imaginations. It has been said that those who can't do teach; but when Hollywood needs a billion-dollar franchise, they always call upon the teachers—the primary doers—those who first render ideals on the frontlines of reality not by swords, but by pens. And so often it is that those great teachers were inspired by even greater teachers, including a blind man and two homeless men—Homer, Socrates, and Jesus—who never wrote a single word between them. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to join Homer, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for classical, exalted ideals.

Ideas Have Consequences is the title of a small, but influential, book by Richard Weaver, and CREATE is based on the premise that classical ideals have value in action. Opportunity abounds to render classical ideals in technological innovations; creating video games with soul and epic storytelling—where ideas in gameworlds have consequences in gameworlds. Varying societal and economic outcomes could be witnessed in virtual reality, depending on the player's choices and actions—on their ideas rendered real via action in the game world—which result in entities ranging from Orwellian dystopias and bureaucracies to democratic republics fostering peace and freedom. So it is that the player will be given a more engaging experience with higher stakes; as epic meaning, born by the battle for ideas which affect the player's relationships and world, ups the ante in plot and character.

Opportunity abounds to render web technologies with digital rights management for artists and creators, so that the authors and inventors might realize their natural Constitutional rights in protecting and profiting from their creations, manifesting entrepreneurship's fundamental premise: the risk taker—the investor, creator, artist, and innovator—ought get the reward. For while classic entrepreneurship is marked by the creation of wealth; all too often modern “entrepreneurship” has been characterized by the transfer of wealth, which is the exact opposite of its true form. While classic innovation was marked by physical engineering, postmodern innovation is oft marked by financial engineering, by which the wealth of true innovation is transferred to the managers with the most creative accountants and PR departments, at a net loss to the greater society, as deceit and subterfuge naturally undermine and oppose the artist, poet, and prophet. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to join Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights and Property Rights.

Postmodernism, while oft providing the shortest path to tenure, has also proven immensely profitable for those willing to gain the world and sacrifice their souls; as bureaucracies profit from groupthink and doublespeak. Indeed, bureaucracy often cannot afford entrepreneurship and innovation, as such entities are generally the province of the individual; and their existence physically counters the mythical value of the bureaucracy, which must pretend to generate wealth while merely transferring it. F. A. Hayek predicts the inevitable, tragic results of placing too much faith in top-down bureaucratic planning in The Road to Serfdom, particularly in two chapters entitled The End of Truth and Why the Worst Get on Top. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights.

• • The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose.—F. A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom

Hayek stated, “Society's course will be changed only by a change in ideas,” and Lord Keynes puts the onus on us to get those ideas right:

• • The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.—Keynes

But ideas are not enough, and Bogle reminds us of that Greek form of honor by which everything is ultimately accomplished—rendering word deed: “Action, always action is required on the ever-dangerous odyssey that each of our lives must follow.” The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to take action and to join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights. Benjamin Franklin agrees:

• • And the Scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did . . . that we did good to our fellow creatures.—Benjamin Franklin

CREATE takes these words to heart, which are bolstered by da Vinici—that classic innovator, inventor, and Renaissance man—“I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough—we must do.” Like Neo, we must cross that threshold; like Frodo we must leave the Shire and join that greater story we were born to partake in, for Morpheus reminds us, “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.”

And the only risk is to take no risk; for to lose one's life is to find it. So many great entrepreneurs had to be fired before they set out on the path that lead towards their greater apotheosis—they were forced across the threshold, and once beyond, they were free to follow their ideals. And those ideals were manifested in the elixir they eventually returned with, enriching us all. Bogle jokes that he “left” his former job at the Wellington Fund and launched Vanguard in the same manner, “fired with enthusiasm.”

The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to take a risk—to go against the expert opinion and create a new realm of video games and gaming—to join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights.

IV. Meeting the Mentor: Bogle's Call to Adventure

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending, . . . . He saw the townlands and learned the minds of many distant men, and weathered many bitter nights and days in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.—Homer's Odyssey

In teaching the Greats we remember every teacher who ever taught Homer and Socrates by deeds as well as words—we salute every mentor who reached on back to Exodus for guidance in their living ventures and thus helped ten thousand students cross that impassible sea and choose rightly—we salute every professor who while never stepping foot in a classroom, made the world their college and university via books, speeches, and ventures—those leaders who not only read the Founding Documents, Shakespeare, and the Bible; but who, like Lincoln, took them to heart and enveloped the eloquent idealists with their soul, and taught us all of history's actualized relevance far better than postmodern professors. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights.

“Who sows virtue reaps honor,” wrote da Vinci, and time and again it has been those who have acted upon Homer's and Socrates' wisdom who have taught the unteachable; and in following the higher ideals, they have exalted the bottom line. Jack Bogle is one such mentor who teaches via matching word and deed, and he sounds the bugle's “call to adventure” each semester in the opening pages of The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism:

• • The most recent episode witnessed the culmination of an era in which our business corporations and our financial institutions, working in tacit harmony, corrupted the traditional nature of capitalism, shattering both confidence in the markets and the accumulated wealth of countless American families. Something went profoundly wrong, fundamentally and pervasively, in corporate America . . . . At the root of the problem, in the broadest sense, was a societal change aptly described by these words from the teacher Joseph Campbell: “In medieval times, as you approached the city, your eye was taken by the Cathedral. Today, it's the towers of commerce. It's business, business, business.” We had become what Campbell called a bottom-line society. But our society came to measure the wrong bottom line: form over substance, prestige over virtue, money over achievement, charisma over character, the ephemeral over the enduring, even mammon over God.”—The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, by John C. Bogle

As so many stories begin with an errant knight wandering into a forest and happening upon an amulet, or goddess, or key (the key to the journey), I first happened upon this most rare, thundering passage in a Carolina bookstore in December 2005, while contemplating the syllabus for the first Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology class which would be taught in the spring of 2006 at UNC; a class that would be based on Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. And there was Jack Bogle—Wall Street's resident idealist, who had resisted a thousand temptations and won a thousand showdowns in the creation of Vanguard, and who I'd heard deliver a most inspirational oration at Princeton the previous year—there he quoted Campbell in stating we'd lost sight of epic story and “the way things ought to be.” The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to follow Campbell's Hero's Journey on out to the way things ought to be.

Bill Moyers' famous interview with Jospeh Campbell resulted in a great book and DVD: The Power of Myth, which led to a Campbellian revival. And Moyers' recent interview with Bogle concludes with Bogle saluting the vast and of oft unheralded wealth of the arts and literature. The class watches both interviews; seeing that classical mythology pervades all successful ventures—be it Star Wars or The Vanguard Group; be it Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces, or Bogle's Battle.

• • I flipped to the opening pages of Battle and saw these epigraphs:
  • If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?—St. Paul, Corinthians
  • This above all: To thine own self be true, and so it shall follow, as the night the day, thou cans't not then be false to any other man.—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.—Matthew
  • We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.—Thomas Jefferson
  • Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.—Woodrow Wilson

Shakespeare, The Bible, Jefferson . . . all would be featured in AE&T, and all will be featured in the novel video games that this invention will foster and inspire! I bought Battle right then and there in Carolina, for I had already started underlining in the book. Leading with Battle would make teaching the AE&T class easy, I reasoned, as with Jack's rich style, majestic accomplishments, and constant references to the classics, I would be able to whet the student's appetites—to convince them that the classics are their greatest investment. It's not every day someone creates a trillion-dollar enterprise, let alone one based on principle. Surely, such mentors have something to say regarding the art of entrepreneurship.

And it would be fun to teach Battle alongside The Odyssey from where the very word mentor derives, as Athena, the goddess of wisdom and beauty, disguises herself as a wise old man, named Mentor, to help Telemachus; and so too might a game inspired by this invention begin. The books would convince the students that ideals trump avarice across all realms and ages, and that character counts far more than all those entities they teach one to count in accounting (and all too often to miscount these days). And when Jack signed that same, beaten, dog-eared copy of Battle a little over a year later in California, where he keynoted the first annual Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival, after getting up at 4 AM in a Philadelphia snowstorm and flying 3,000 miles on the eleventh anniversary of his miraculous heart transplant, he added the inscription, “Press on, regardless.” Simple words backed by enormous deeds; which can never fade.

In the opening of Battle, Jack turns not to the vast contributions of the Greatest Generation, nor his own accomplishments (he oft jokes that he has a lot to be humble about), but he humbly writes a heartfelt inscription to the freshmen—and we're all freshmen in this class:

• • My generation has left America with much to be set right, You have the opportunity of a lifetime to fix what has been broken. Hold high your idealism and your values. Remember always that even one person can make a difference. And do your part “to begin the world anew.”

Bogle's words speak to the students. They thunder to the students, as the students are longing for a renaissance. Although they come to college often taking on unprecedented debt which contributes to the 50% divorce rate they will graduate facing—where Odysseus and Penelope are tragically divided and never reunited as the fiatocracy deconstructs the classics to place all in service of the state and corporations; although the students have grown up witnessing soulless scandal after scandal until scandal has almost come to define the very nature of contemporary business and government, and the pinnacle of postmodern success in this “barrel of rotten apples;” they yet show up with immortal souls that are born knowing of higher, nobler ways; and inextinguishable yearnings for the thundering third act, whence justice is rendered. Such is the distant thunder they hear in Battle and The Odyssey. And the rest of the class pertains to how best to proceed with the renaissance's exalted venture. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to heed the call to adventure, fight for marriage and the family as did Odysseus, and join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights, rendering exalted ideals real, as ideas have consequences.

Again—in his Poetics Aristotle writes “while history tells us the way things are, story tells us the way things ought to be,” and he adds, “When storytelling declines the result is decadence.” Thus AE&T has a higher calling than short-term profits, bringing to mind Captain Ahab's words:

• • Nantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a little lower layer. If money's to be the measurer, man, and the accountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by girdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then, let me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium here! He smites his chest.—Moby Dick

“It must be of the spirit if it is to save the flesh,” said General MacArthur, and this battle must ultimately be for a renaissance in the classical liberal arts education; for ideas have consequences. When we return the Greats to the center and circumference of academia—their natural and rightful place—great dividends will accrue on Wall Street and Main Street, in Hollywood and the Heartland. If we fail to do this . . . well, we must not fail. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to heed the call to adventure an dpursue the higher wealth granted by virtuous word and deed, fight for marriage and the family as did Odysseus, and join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights, rendering exalted ideals real, as ideas have consequences.

“Life imitates art,” and ideals set down in ink have ever preceded exalted action; and so it is that the present invention will have far off and wide-ranging consequences in the contemporary culture. Where would the front lines have found courage during the American Revolution, without the poetry of The Declaration of Independence, which Jefferson did not consider original, but instead characterized with, “I did not consider it part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before.” And it is that very same pervading history—that classical heritage—which the students must be afforded so that they can foster lasting wealth by integrating the epic soul in living ventures and institutions—in schools and businesses—in the government and that far more fundamental kingdom—the family.

I always ask the students what law and business schools the framers of the Constitution—that foundational business plan and legal guide for all ventures—attended. Some guess Harvard Law. Others guess Yale or Princeton. Well, they attended the same law school as Lincoln and Melville—as Shakespeare and Dante—the Great Books and Classics; those foundational case studies which schooled Emerson on entrepreneurial “self reliance” and Thoreau on “civil disobedience,” and which are ready to bolster and befriend any soul who looks their way. 'Tis the school where admission is free, the learning is never done, and there are no degrees. CREATE is but a humble quest to partake in this higher institution.

Socrates stated that all true wealth comes from virtue, and not virtue from wealth, and with this in mind, CREATE, and novel video games inspired by the present invention, would teach Adam Smith in his proper order, with A Theory of Moral Sentiments preceding The Wealth of Nations. It is at the crossroads of Athens and Jerusalem that the meaning of 1776's entrepreneurial precepts—found both in Smith's and Jefferson's words—comes to life:

• • When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Those idealists who remain loyal to the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God are oft deemed rebellious and cantankerous, and vehemently opposed by Kings, Tyrants, and modern CEOs; just as they would be in the novel video games inspired and made possible by the present invention. But the true rebels and rugged players shall fear no King's army, nor PR department in this novel FPS, for Jefferson wrote: “I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” How many business schools include such simple sentiments in their ethics class? While teaching students how to corrupt the housing market via the marketing of subprime “neutron bomb” loans laden with fine print, as fanboys hire and kill hookers and cops and jack cars, while all the lovely Disney Sirens conceal their true intentions, how many universities teach the greater value of the home?

• • But they could not persuade me or touch my heart.
  • Nothing is sweeter than your own country
  • And your own parents, not even living in a rich house—Homer's Odyssey

Bogle's Battle celebrates the spirit of 1776, and he quotes Adam Smith and General Washington in a section on business ethics which ought be read in every MBA program; or at least any MBA program that considers it worthwhile to study the precepts underlying trillion-dollar Wall Street ventures as well as America's very engine of wealth—classic entrepreneurship founded on character, integrity, and humble service. The present invention would foster video games that allow the player to heed the call to adventure, fight for classic entrepreneurship, marriage, and the family as did Odysseus, and join Adam Smith, George Washington, Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights, rendering exalted ideals real, as ideas have consequences:

• • The idea that values are intimately embedded in the practice of business was hardly anathema to the worldly economists of the ages. Late in the eighteenth century, even before Adam Smith extolled, in The Wealth of Nations, the virtues of the invisible hand of competition and the essential nature of personal advantage and self-interest in making the world's economic system, work, he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In that remarkable book he called for “reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct, who shows us the real littleness of ourselves, the prosperity of generosity, of resigning the greatest interests of our own for the greater interests of others, the love of what is honorable and noble, the grandeur and dignity of our own characters.” Adam Smith with us again, but here as the apostle of virtue. . . . Joseph Schumpeter identified a similar spirit. Nearly a century ago, he described for us the motives of the successful entrepreneur: “The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity. . . . the will to conquer, the impulse to fight, to succeed, not for the fruits of success, but for success itself.”
  • In the 1930s John Maynard Keynes followed suit, reminding us that numbers are only numbers, quantities on a scoreboard that are only one measure—and, truth told, hardly the best measure—of an enterprise. Keynes emphasized that it was there merest pretense to suggest that an enterprise is “mainly actuated by the statements in its own prospectus, however candid and sincere . . . based on an exact calculation of benefits to come.” Rather, the key to success is “animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction,” warning that “if animal spirits are dimmed and the spontaneous optimism falters, leaving us to depend on nothing but a mathematical expectation, enterprise will surely die.
  • These three economists—surely among the greatest in history—are all sending us the same message, advising us to put the greater interest of others and the dignity of our own characters first, and our own self-interest second; to put enterprise and animal spirits first, and managing for the bottom line second; to put the joy of creating and the will to conquer first, and the mindless conformity of greed last . . . .
  • . . . Again hear Adam Smith, “He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means of his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens.” So it is essential that the owners of corporate America speak up, speak out, and demand that our corporations and our fund managers represent our interests rather than their own—the owners first, the managers only second.
  • We also would do well to honor by our actions the words of the giant who was, all those years ago, the first in the hearts of his countrymen. In his farewell address in 1796, President George Washington reminded us that “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government), warning that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”—John C. Bogle, The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, Chapter 10, American Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, To Begin the World Anew.

“To begin the world anew,” are the words that mark both the beginning of Battle and its final chapter, and those very same words also bookend Bogle's rugged optimism which never changes course. “To begin the world anew,” is the charge laid at the student's feet; and 'tis every entrepreneur's humble task. Martin Luther King recognized the importance of the epic, immortal spirit whose exaltation becomes every generation's duty, “If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” Emerson stated that the universe is ultimately moral, and the present invention would foster video games that allow the player to heed the call to adventure, fight for a more exalted world and classical, epic ideals, as did King, Emerson, Odysseus, and join Hayek, Homer, Jefferson, Socrates, and Jesus in fighting for Natural Rights, Freedom, Liberty, and Property Rights, rendering exalted ideals real, as ideas have consequences.

Here I go again, quoting Bogle quoting:

• • A year ago, in a talk on entrepreneurship that celebrated the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, I reflected on this 18th century connection with a wonderful quotation: “Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.” These words were the opening epigram of Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, by the late Neil Postman—prolific author, social critic, and professor at New York University. Postman's book presented an impassioned defense of the old-fashioned liberal humanitarianism that was the hallmark of the Age of Reason. His aim was to restore the balance between mind and machine, and his principal concern was our move away from an era in which the values and character of Western Civilization were at the forefront of the minds of our great philosophers and leaders, and in which the prevailing view was that anything that's truly important must have a moral authority.—Bogle, Vanguard. Saga of Heroes

V. Serving Student Demand for the Classical Spirit

The present invention would foster games serving rising demand for the classical, epic, exalted spirit; wherein one gets to pass judgment, reunite families, and kill the fanboys who hire and kill prostitutes and cops, delivering exalted justice to them and the gaming community. The rising generation, although born in a declining fiatocracy which funds and institutes postmodernism and debt, yet have immortal souls. And thus the demand for exalted, epic art is as vast—just as vast as that art is in short and rare supply.

• • Laws will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance.—Thomas Jefferson
  • The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves.—Joseph Campbell

Over 120 students applied for the first AE&T class a few years back at UNC Chapel Hill, and the class has now been taught as a high school class, freshman seminar, upper-level class, MBA class, and class combining everyone—undergrads and grads, freshmen with record labels, third year law students, MBAs, and computer science majors. The Greats speak to all ages and majors, while entrepreneurship beckons every soul to take ownership in destiny. And if ever supply reaches demand on the university campus, all students will be afforded the opportunity to read Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism alongside Homer's Odyssey. Their appetites whetted for the glory of the Greats, the students develop business plans as they journey on through most useful works—works including The Founding Documents, excerpts from Adam Smith and Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Poetics, Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, Socrates' Apology, and Dante's Inferno, The Book of Matthew, and other classical works. What do these works have to do with video games, art, entrepreneurship, and technology? Well, as long as art and entrepreneurship concerns itself with serving society with wealth and freedom in a free-market system, then the question is, “What don't the Greats have to do with entrepreneurship, art, technology, and video games?” The present invention will foster games that achieve the higher calling that Socrates and Jesus were put to death for heeding.

The Greats have ever been the true center and circumference of art and education, and hundreds of years from now, the soul's center and circumference will not have changed; and thus this present invention is suited for creating a brand new realm of epic, classical video games, which will last for hundreds of years. Where moral freedom and liberty yet walk hand-in-hand with innovation and entrepreneurship, wealth will be fostered; and students shall learn this in the novel “ideas have consequences” gameworlds. Where humble individuals—the source of all art and science—remain free to navigate by the classic ideals on their own hero's journeys—on out past the bureaucracies of their day to where they can seize the sword from the stone, society will be enriched, and students shall learn this in the novel “ideas have consequences” gameworlds. The lone visionary, who voyages beyond, is the very same one who eventually returns home with the elixir; as sure as Odysseus returns on home to Penelope, Dante ascends to Beatrice, and Moses comes on down from that mountain with those ten tenets that proved far more valuable than the golden calf he found his contemporaries worshipping. I doubt he'd approve of us taking them off the walls, and students shall learn this in the novel “ideas have consequences” gameworlds.

Now and then faculty have remarked that the syllabus presents an arduous reading list, especially for a business class, but the reading list is what makes AE&T possible. For in these cynical times, students might not believe Dr. E about the primary importance of ideals in business and life—in enduring art, technology, video games, and blockbusters; and so I step aside to let Bogle, Fay, Homer, Campbell, Dante, Plato, Aristotle, the Founding Fathers, da Vinci, Star Wars, 300, and The Matrix all deliver the same message; leaving no doubt as to the vast value of a classical liberal arts education. And after they read Carl Schramm's Universities and the Entrepreneurial Imperative; it is not too hard to convince them to “go forth and embody those ideals—take ownership in your educations and lives via action—take classes celebrating the Great Books, take rugged hands-on courses in science and technology, and then roll up your sleeves and render those ideals real in living ventures,” such as the present invention that will render and realize novel video games with classical, epic, and exalted soul.

There is not time enough to give the Great Books their due in a four-year college education, let alone a semester or festival, and my chief aim is to create portals and novel video games as those described in this invention, which will lead on out towards lifetimes of learning; so that students might learn to keep a copy of Homer beside one's bed, reference Jefferson or the Constitution in a business plan, carry Dante while traveling; and learn to read the news of the day—The Wall Street Journal and New York Times—in the deeper context of the permanent things; so that they can resist popular opinion and the “wisdom of crowds” should it ever eclipse truth and freedom's ideals. As the entrepreneur is marked by the quest to sail beyond the way things are, on out to the way things ought to be, the epic stories are their most valuable asset—as valuable as the fixed stars are to sailors navigating the open ocean. To send students forth in life without rudimentary knowledge of the Greats would be akin to sending sailors forth without knowledge of the stars, and thus the novel games described herein shall be best played by those who acquire classical learning and wisdom.

So it is that the very least I can do is to design novel games that aid in the teaching of this “Hero's Journey” class year, after year, after year—to call the students to adventure by teaching Battle alongside The Odyssey; before partaking in the following books; by reading, by excerpting, by referencing, by acting upon and rendering their ideals real; and by telling the students that we ultimately have not the power to grade them—but we would surely be failing them were we to neglect introducing them to these epic schoolmasters. We've been given but one lifetime to prepare for that final final, whence we will be asked not only if we read and understood, but if we did.

Reading list for Dr. E's AE&T Class, & books Theat will Help Players Make It Through The Novel Ideas Have Consequences Video Games:

Opening Books:

The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, John C. Bogle

The Odyssey, Homer

Mythology:

The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell

Philosophy:

Socrates' Apology, Plato

Plato's Republic (particularly Book VII & The Parable of The Cave)

Aristotle's Poetics

The American Founding:

The Declaration of Independence

The Constitution

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

Economics

The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith

The Entrepreneurial Imperative, Carl Schramm

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek

Classical Economics, Thomas Sowell

Religion:

Exodus (KJV)

The Book of Matthew (KJV)

Literature:

Hamlet, Shakespeare

Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Paradise Lost, Milton

Dante's Inferno

The present invention will allow us to imagine and exalt a game wherein the above classics are brought to life along with their deep, profound souls and spirits.

I know that I cannot begin to do these works justice in a semester, let alone four years, but all I ask the students is that they don't return the books at the end of semester; all of which cost about the same as a single modern textbook; and that they treat them as lifelong friends. For way leads onto way . . . and all these books lead on back to eternity's common source—the moral soul. And as the final assignment is a fifteen-page plan regarding a new venture; in which one freshman took the opportunity to write on how to improve the university, we also incorporate business books:

Business:

• • Own Your Own Corporation, by Garrett Sutton, Robert T Kiyosaki, and Ann Blackman
  • The Art of The Start, by Guy Kawasaki
  • Angel Investing: Matching Startup Funds with Startup Companies—A Guide for Entrepreneurs, Individual Investors, and Venture Capitalists by Mark Van Osnabrugge and Robert J. Robinson

VI. All Roads Lead to Rome

As all roads lead to Rome, AE&T by and by evolved into a Great Books course, navigating on back to the crossroads of Athens and Jerusalem where a philosopher once stated, “the past is prologue,” and so it is that novel games, such as those implied by the present invention, shall soon gain classical souls. For time and again; when it came to business, art, law, entrepreneurship, and technology—to management and leadership—I could find no greater mentors than Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Shakespeare, da Vinci, and Dante—individuals who, like Newton, “stood upon the shoulders of giants to see further.” Indeed, at its most fundamental level, law comes to us from art and epic poetry, suggesting a more efficient way to teach the soul of screenwriting, law, art, economics, and entrepreneurship all in the same class and video game—simply exalt the Greats and classical principles. At HerosJourneyRenaissance.org I write:

• • The movie 300 demonstrated that the rising generation is longing for the classical spirit and soul; and Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 is revolutionizing academia with its simple precept that the spirit of our law and literature—of The Constitution and Hamlet—derive from the same place—the classical Judeo Christian heritage. And so that which had been divided into business, law, film, art, and accounting; is reunited in truth and the simplicity of soul—in a classical liberal arts education—in a foundational renaissance.

Aristotle's Poetics ought be required reading for every gamewriter, screenwriter, and novelist, along with Homer; for if the Greats cannot teach the art of storytelling, then it likely cannot be taught. And lawyers and MBAs would also read the masters at CREATE, as they played the novel “Ideas Have Consequences Video Games,” as Madison suggested in a letter he wrote to Jefferson while contemplating the first textbook for the University of Virginia's nascent law school:

• • I have looked with attention over your intended proposal of a textbook for the Law School. It is certainly the very material that the true doctrines of liberty, as exemplified in our Political system, should be inculcated on those who are to sustain and administer it. It is, at the same time, not easy to find standard books that will be both guides & guards for the purpose. Sidney & Locke are admirably calculated to impress on young minds the right of Nations to establish their own Governments, and to inspire a love of free ones . . . . And on the distinctive principles of the Government of our own State, and that of the United States, the best guides are to be found in—
  • 1. The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental act of Union of these States.
  • 2. The book known by the title of the Federalist, being an Authority to which appeal is habitually made by all & rarely declined or denied by many, as evidence of the general opinion of those who framed & those who accepted the Constitution of the United States on questions as to its genuine meaning.
  • 3. The Resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia in 1799, on the subject of the Alien & Sedition laws, which appeared to accord with the predominant sense of the people of the U.S.
  • 4. The Inaugural Speech & Farewell Address of President Washington, as conveying political lessons of peculiar value; and that in the branch of the School of law which is to treat on the subject of Government, these shall be used as the text & documents of the school.

CREATE, and novel video games inspired by this invention, would make sure that every student met the masters with the intent of developing lifelong friendships, thusly resulting in superior and exalted forms of education. The classics served Bogle quite well throughout the creation and stewardship of Vanguard, as well as during his multiple pursuits as student, humble entrepreneur, author, lecturer, and writer; which while encompassing a remarkable range, are yet all but one career—the career of an idealist. Mark Twain found words for Bogle's occupation—“Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

When Twain addressed the 1906 Congress regarding copyrights and intellectual property, he did not reference case studies, but he cut straight to the chase and referenced that original legal scholar—Moses:

• • I am aware that copyright must have a limit, because that is required by the Constitution of the United States, which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don't like to be obliged to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is, “Thou shalt not steal,” but I am trying to use more polite language.”

So it is that the “spirit of the law” trumps “the letter of the law” in the artist's soul, and CREATE agrees with Twain's assessment of artists' rights—those artists who have practically built web 2.0, but have yet to be compensated; as aggregator's capitalism has eclipsed creator's capitalism; leading to the decline of the music industry. While youtube received $1.6 billion for aggregating artists, the artists received nothing; as they had been told that they have no value as an individual, but only in the context of a group. This parallels a greater transition, as Bogle noted in Battle—manger's capitalism has eclipsed owner's capitalism. It is as if the artists have to pay Tom Sawyer for the privilege of painting his fence. Or, as Bogle might say, the investors have to pay the mutual fund managers for the privilege of receiving lower returns than those bestowed by the simple Vanguard Index fund. Which brings us to the common, epic battle of the hero's journey that would be exalted in games inspired by the present invention—wherein the player—the worker, investor, entrepreneur, and creator must perpetually fight the “good fight”—to retain that which is rightfully theirs as dictated by Natural Law. Jefferson, Washington, et al lead the charge against King George, and the spirit of the American Revolution is echoed in the following words:

• • The classic system—owner's capitalism, had been based on a dedication to serving the interests of the corporation's owners in maximizing return on their capital investment. But a new system developed—manager's capitalism—in which, Pfaff wrote, “The corporation came to be run to profit its managers, in complicity if not conspiracy with accountants and managers of other corporations.”—John C. Bogle, Founder and Former Chairman of The Vanguard Group, The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism
  • There's a difference between us. You think the people of this land exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.—William Wallace in Braveheart, by Randall Wallace
  • Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute.—Joseph Campbell, author of Hero With a Thousand Faces

CREATE, and the novel video games inspired by the present invention, would approach technology based on these enduring tenets supporting individual rights, also echoed in the words of Smith, Friedman, Hayek, and John Adams; in their reflections on individual property rights and freedom:

• • Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.—Milton Friedman
  • If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.—Ludwig von Mises
  • The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.—Fredrich August von Hayek
  • The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.—John Adams
  • The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honor, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.—Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations

So it is that the classical soul demands that artists must be given software that allows them to protect and profit from their creations, as well as video games that exalt classical ideals which have exalted consequences when rendered via virtuous word and deed. The recording industry has been demolished by postmodernism on multiple fronts, as it eroded both the notion of classical property rights and the epic narratives that bolstered the classical love necessary to meaningful love songs; and thus epic stories which define property rights and love are of fundamental essence to a renaissance. DRM systems will be needed to protect the film and music that is born by the individual artist's rendering of ideals. And such art will contain the epic stories and ideals that underlie the concept of natural rights and property rights—rights that will be exalted novel video games described by the present invention.

Opportunity abounds for entrepreneurs to marry classical ideals to tomorrow's social networks and digital content sites; allowing the artists to protect and profit from their creations. CREATE envisions web-based content systems that afford creators their natural property rights, and even a new breed of video games could be created, which renders the dark outcomes of societies that forgo natural rights, property rights, and their moral soul; defined in Exodus and The Odyssey alike. Tomorrow's software designers and game developers—tomorrow's arts entrepreneurs—can benefit greatly from reading the Greats and rendering those ideals in living ventures, endowing art and technology with soul.

As the past is prologue, CREATE envisions video games wherein the player battles not just for points, but for ideas; where they go up against not just graphically insidious monsters; but those greater monsters that resulted in the twentieth century's horrific atrocities—ideas that had grotesque and dire consequences.

Benjamin Franklin—America's original entrepreneur—made a list of twelve precepts to live by, whereupon he realized he'd forgotten the most important one: “13. Humility: Imitate Socrates and Jesus.” For one cannot serve two masters, and what does it profit one to gain the world and lose their soul? And with the same courage that Achilles took to battle, Socrates addressed the Athenian jury with a basic treatise on economics—the present invention imagines games in which one could save Socrates, or exalt in similar courage:

• • For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.—The Apology

Socrates did not get tenure for The Apology, but rather he was sentenced to death by peer review; and if ever you should sojourn into the ornate Princeton Chapel, you will see Socrates in the stained glass, alongside the prophets. I oft wonder what artist enshrined Socrates up there—a craftsman now long passed on—but yet I remember them to my class, along with all kindred spirits and unsung heroes in this community of immortal souls, who did their essential part in propagating the vast wealth of our heritage. Bogle quoted Helen Keller in his Vanguard: Saga of Heroes speech to salute this fellowship of humble heroes: “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

I forwarded the above Socrates quote to Bogle, and it ended up in another classic speech: Enough. Commencement Address MBA Graduates of the McDonough School of Business by John C. Bogle, founder, The Vanguard Group Upon receiving the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Georgetown University. The speech opens with:

• • Here's how I recall the wonderful story that sets the theme for my remarks today: At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, the author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.”
  • Enough. I was stunned by its simple eloquence, to say nothing of its relevance to some of the vital issues arising in American society today. Many of them revolve around money—yes, money—increasingly, in our “bottom line” society, the Great God of prestige, the Great Measure of the Man (and Woman). So this morning I have the temerity to ask you soon-to-be-minted MBA graduates, most of whom will enter the world of commerce, to consider with me the role of “enough” in business and entrepreneurship in our society, “enough” in the dominant role of the financial system in our economy, and “enough” in the values you will bring to the fields you choose for your careers. Bogle,—http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20070518.htm

The novel games inspired by the present invention will teach that the greater rewards are not in hiring and killing prostitutes and jacking cars and killing innocent civilians, but they are in serving the classical, weightless, higher ideals, like The Man With No Name does, in fistful of Dollars, when he finally rides away on his donkey, leaving the gold behind, as he had come not for the money, but for justice—to reunite the family and render justice to the gangsters. The novel video games implied and described in this present invention will allow the player to render that higher justice, reunite the family, and leave the gold behind.

VII. Battles & Odysseys to Come

• • There is nothing, in my little reading, more ancient in my memory than the observation that arts, sciences, and empire had traveled westward.—John Adams

And so CREATE and a brand new breed of video games will ride with the Greats in rendering ideals real, following the lead of the first three years of the AE&T classes: freshman seminars, upper level courses, and MBA classes, and continue hosting HJEF festivals which have been held in a business school, a law school, and a music venue. The classics come to life on the cutting edge, and this year's HJEF hosted Flint Dille and John Zuur, award-winning authors of the #1 book on video game design, who emphasized the importance of classic story and the hero's journey in their own pioneering odyssey—defining a brand new art form.

Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism shall sound the definitive bugle on that first day for years to come, and the AE&T students will rush to the front lines of the renaissance in reading Battle alongside Homer's Odyssey—a most pertinent book to the American spirit, for in his later years Jefferson wrote, “One by one they all fall away, until one is left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” Students and gamers will exalt in this classical spirit—join in this epic battle for higher ideals—for that freedom which requires eternal vigilance—in this brand new realm of games and gaming.

Both Battle and The Odyssey tell the same story that will be told in the video games inspired by this brave new invention—character, integrity, ingenuity, and ideals are most practical tools when it comes to defeating the lumbering, one-eyed bureaucratic Cyclops, resisting the temptations of the mutual fund marketing Sirens, battling the suitors and croupiers who have been living off one's estate, and reclaiming that ultimate treasure—the home and family—Ithaca, faithful Penelope, and Telemachus, whose coming of age Odysseus witnesses in the final battle. Not only have Universities been leaving billions on the shelves in the form of the classical tenets applied in the business realm, but they have been leaving that far higher wealth there too—that which cannot be counted down in dollars from the mint—Campbell's “myths to live by” which alone can enrich the impoverished spiritual realm. Too often those myths have been exiled in the name of short-term profits; as character and integrity—the founts of true, long-term wealth—get in the way of the quick buck. And so it is that the novel “ideas have consequences” video games shall result in epic profits for those bold enough to implement and exalt the present invention.

While an MBA is given transient tools to assess the price of housing hedge funds relative to interest rates, as taxpaying home-owners bail out the banks that foreclose on their houses; the university oft forgets to grant MBAs the more permanent tools to assess and preserve the far greater value of the home. When presented with the opportunity to stay forever young with a goddess, Odysseus opts to shove off and risk death in the stormy seas so as to return on home to his faithful Penelope. Too many modern leaders and politicians never read The Odyssey in college, but tomorrow's students ought be afforded the exalted spirit their souls naturally demand; and which Jefferson et al pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to bestow to future generations, as they “gave us a republic,” in Franklin's words, “if you can keep it.” John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” And so it is that the novel “ideas have consequences” video games shall result in epic profits for those bold enough to implement and exalt the present invention, exalting a renaissance which inspires people to keep this republic by fighting of, by, and for the better angels of their nature.

The Odyssey, like all great books and lasting endeavors, endures via the beauty of its moral story which emboldens our better angels and grants us mere mortals courage, as it shows that even the greatest heroes suffer immeasurably in their battle for ideals. Who are we to complain or feel slighted when even the mighty Odysseus must dress as a beggar in his own home, which has been overrun by a mob of lesser men and croupiers? Who are we to complain when fanboys attack the novel precepts in this invention? For their countering and condescending fiat fanboy opinions—their snarky and thorough dismissal of the Great Books and Classics—of Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Constitution—lend to this invention's very patentability.

We are drawn to the Greats for the very same reason we seek the mountains and oceans—their serene immensity reminds us of the smallness of our trials; and too, it reminds us of the exalting eternity of our soul. Something about us, we know, lies beyond death and taxes. Is it any mystery then, that the wealthy are drawn to donate to universities, following in the footsteps of the original donors of greater wealth? Donors with names like Cicero, Socrates, Solomon, and Shakespeare; who didn't climb mountains because they were there; but built them because they weren't. Mountains and oceans pervade the greats; from Mount Sinai to Noah's flood, which Melville pointed out yet covers two-thirds of the earth. And thus there is yet plenty of room for a brave new fleet of games based on this present invention.

The name Odysseus means “man of woe and suffering,” and it is a hallmark of Western Culture, and every Hollywood epic, that the noblest oft suffer to serve ideals. And we can never forget the brave soldiers all around the world:

• • Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home. For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom he abuses to burn that flag.—Zell Miller,

There they are, standing for ideals and selflessly serving without ever drawing attention to the arduous journey or any personal suffering. And art ought pay solemn tribute to this—not to the glory nor horror of war—but the glory of the soldiers. “We all did a bit of dying in that war,” the Outlaw Jose Wales states, as blood drips on his shoe—the only visible sign that he has been wounded. At the end of the journey, when they have saved the world from a darker fate, their only wish is that they could have done better and more. And while they're spread far and wide, the very least we can do is battle for the American soul with words, art, and a renaissance back home; so as to make sure that that Constitution they swore to defend is yet here when they return on home. So it is that this present invention would foster video games that would reward those who are willing to suffer to serve higher ideals.

Bogle makes rugged battle look easy in his books and speeches, as Tiger Woods does for golf, but look closely and one sees the immense dedication, soul, and inspired talent the creation of Vanguard took—epic battles which show that Homer's words are not to be found upon dusty old parchments alone, but that they yet thunder in living history. The present invention would exalt novel games that exalted the classical precepts found in the dusty parchments.

Odysseus presents his stoic humor as storms and death threaten the long journey ahead, “Well, I have made it this far, I do not believe it can get any worse, but yet I am curious to see.” Herodotus recounts that when a Spartan was told that the Persian arrows come down so thick that they form a cloud of death, the Spartan smiled and said, “then we shall fight in the shade.” And Odysseus shoves off from safety with his principle intact and home in his heart, to risk death in the wild unknown; but knowing that the greater risk lies in abandoning his dream of Penelope; and knowing too that there is no force that can take his ideals from him, if he does not abandon them. So too did Lincoln note that with oceans on either side, no enemy could take America, save for one from within. Socrates reasoned that although death catches up with all, the immortal soul has a unique chance of outrunning wickedness via noble action; and that while the Athenian jury could condemn his mere body to death; they had no power over his immortal soul. Jesus stated that he was not king of this world, but rather the realm of ideals, where Pontius Pilate had no power to free him nor condemn him. The present invention would exalt novel games that exalted the classical wisdom of Great Religions, rewarding players for moral actions.

Socrates saw his quest for truth and virtue every bit as dangerous as the heroes in The Iliad, and reflected that he would be quite the coward and do Achilles a great disservice, were he ever to alter his words and depart from speaking truth out of fear of mere death, which comes to all. “A coward dies a thousand times before his death,” Shakespeare wrote, and this is the Western Heritage that Homer and Moses agreed on—wherein honest beggars are greater than corrupt kings and Pharisees; where the righteous entrepreneur who gains wealth via service would be favored in the natural order over the bureaucrat who gains wealth via fiat. They all agreed:

• • When the Great Scorekeeper comes to write against your name,
  • He asks not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.—Grantland Rice

The present invention would exalt novel games that exalted that higher score—far beyond mere points, money, cops killed, and monsters slain. The present invention would exalt Character in the game world, and thus plot and story, first and foremost, far over spectacle and cop killing, drugs, and Grand Theft.

This yearning for moral truth and justice is the natural fount of Western wealth that Shakespeare and Dante celebrated, and should we ever cease to teach it, we will have ceased to teach. Though I attended Princeton, as did Bogle, I will yet admit that Harvard is also a fine school. Harvard leads the world's universities with a $35 billion endowment, and yet a recent Harvard Dean was driven to write a book entitled, “Excellence Without Soul, How a Great University Forgot Education,” echoing the fact that like modern video games, our finest universities also lack soul.

Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard, wrote:

• • . . . the lack of attention that most faculties pay to the growing body of research about how much students are learning and how they could be taught to learn more. Hundreds of studies have accumulated on . . . improving critical thinking, moral reasoning, quantitative literacy, and other skills vital to undergraduate education . . . yet . . . fewer than 10 percent of college professors pay any attention to such work . . . . College faculties have long been able to ignore education research and avoid discussions of teaching methods because they risk no adverse consequences.—Derek Bok, “Are Colleges Failing? Higher Ed Needs New Lesson Plans,” Boston Globe

Well, CREATE, and the video games fostered by this new invention, would be offering that new lesson plan, which is actually an old lesson plan—the classics which shall bolster the rising renaissance in the form of video games, literature, film, and exalted art.

When movies forget the thundering third act whence justice is rendered, they shall cease being art. In the original 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy lives and the bad guy goes to jail. In the recent Hollywood remake, the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away free, as postmodern producers get away with murder. Again, “life imitates art,” and modern mutual funds and financial institutions also get away with billions upon billions of dollars derived from financial “engineering,” “sub-prime” accounting standards, and transaction fees; as if trading stocks is more important than creating products; as if Casinos generate more wealth than factories; as if gambling and subterfuge can replace long-term wealth generation via entrepreneurship's classic integrity, as if spectacle shall forever trump character and story. Well, in his Poetics, Aristotle ranked the elements of dramatic action in order of importance, placing story and character first; and spectacle last. Again, “when storytelling declines, the result is decadence,” and in the original Beowulf our hero slays Grendel's mother, but in the Hollywood remake, he sleeps with her. The present invention would exalt video games over the current fanboy films and games; and allow the player to play for higher ideals, a higher score based on Character and Morality, as implied in an earlier patent application of mine, and exalted art.

Bogle laments our modern taste for spectacle over substance—for bread and circuses—and he calls upon us to join Odysseus in putting our house in order:

• • I get right to the point in the very first paragraph: “Capitalism has been moving in the wrong direction.”
  • The introduction that follows doesn't let up. I start off with a remarkably light revision of the classic first paragraph of Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, adapted to the present era. Compare the two first sentences. Gibbon: “In the second century of the Christian Era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind.” Battle: “As the twentieth century of the Christian era ended, the United States of America comprehended the most powerful position on earth and the wealthiest portion of mankind.”
  • So when I add Gibbon's conclusion—“(Yet) the Roman Empire would decline and fall, a revolution which will be ever remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth”—I'm confident that thoughtful readers do not miss the point. But of course I hammer it home anyway: “Gibbon's history reminds us that no nation can take its greatness for granted. There are no exceptions.” As one of two reviews—both very generous—of The Battle that appeared in The New York Times noted, “Subtle Mr. Bogle is not.”
  • No, I'm not writing off America. But my certain trumpet is warning that we must put our house in order. “The example of the fall of the Roman Empire ought to be a strong wake-up call to all of those who share my respect and admiration for the vital role that capitalism has played in America's call to greatness. Thanks to our marvelous economic system, based on private ownership of productive facilities, on prices set in free markets, and on personal freedom, we are the most prosperous society in history, the most powerful nation on the face of the globe, and, most important of all, the highest exemplar of the values that, sooner or later, are shared by the human beings of all nations: the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”—John Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes,
  • http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20070227.htm

Without the sanctity of epic story, we might as well just inflate grades and tuitions and transform the university endowment into the perfect Grand Theft administrative mutual fund, where the investors—the students—receive no returns on their investments, just like the civilians who have their cars stolen in GTA, and wherein the investors leave not empty-handed, but with great debt—both monetary and spiritual, just as the kids who spend their days playing GTA; just when they should be reading the Odyssey, launching entrepreneurial ventures, getting married, and working not just for houses, but for homes—society's fundamental bedrock, wherein the children learn all those fundamental virtuous entities that cannot be taught anywhere else, but only hinted at and satirized in government bureaucracies; which some see as useful in fostering the growth of further bureaucracies. If universities forget to salute 1984, Animal Farm, The Road to Serfdom, and A Brave New World by reading them, society will salute these works by reenacting them, as ideas have consequences. Entrepreneurship—that magical, mysterious mechanism of long-term wealth creation—must never be institutionalized as its opposite: burgeoning bureaucracies that must increase taxes and tuitions, which must promote debt and doublespeak, and which must exile the honest innovators and creative souls—society's true founts of wealth, who serve via frugality, thrift, and idealism. The present invention will foster video games that show the consequences of ideas.

For 2800 years humanity has passed The Odyssey and The Bible on down—to the Adam Smith, The Founding Fathers, Cecil B. Demille, and Sergio Leone—as the epics contain the moral truths that were etched into reality long before Homer ever called upon the Muse; and which will prevail long after the bureaucracies of our day have faded away. For make no mistake; the great books cannot be deconstructed, and they will prevail. It is not wise to hedge against the immortal soul—one might as well bet against eternity, and those who hedge against the immortal soul in the video game worlds implied by this present invention, shall lose.

The Odyssey speaks to that reality which science cannot apprehend, and without which all economics is for naught. The Greats render our mythical reality wherein Moses came not out of Starbucks after studying case studies about opinions of committee's opinions, but wherein he comes down off the mountain after conversing the with Judge of all judges, to teach us that fundamental tenet of economics 101: “Thou shalt not steal,”—a narrative found not in a textbook, but in an epic story included in the bestselling book of all time—year in and year out. The Odyssey sees the highest god Zeus as the protector of strangers and beggars; and the poem lauds Odysseus for treating Kings and beggars equally before the law—a principle enshrined in the Roman frieze above the US Supreme Court “Equal Justice Under Law”—words that echo the truth that is etched into every immortal soul by that more enduring Sculptor. Vanguard was founded on such principles:

• • As I expressed, over and over again, praise and appreciation for the crew's efforts, I constantly warned of the perils of bureaucracy—the challenge from within—and of the need to treat one-another “from the highest to the humblest,” with respect, honor, and decency.—Character Counts, The Creation and Building of The Vanguard Group, by John C. Bogle, p. 82

And so too shall character count in the video games inspired by the present invention.

We owe it to the students to pass along the context in which Adam Smith composed and in which the Invisible Hand operates to create the wealth of nations—that epic mythological context which rust cannot tarnish and thieves cannot steal; those patient books of classical antiquity that can be ignored for hundreds of years, as they were during the dark ages, but which can never be forgotten, and that classical context shall be passed along in the novel video games described in this present invention. The books that will wait for a Dante and da Vinici; or a Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, and Madison; or a Bogle or Hanson, and will then spring forth in the living context; those books which embolden the better angels of our nature, which exalt our Natural Rights, and which bestow upon us that highest of all wealth—moral meaning.

Bogle salutes the Founding Fathers—those brave renderers of classical principle—throughout his most eloquent books and speeches; and his signature would have been on The Declaration of Independence had he only been born a couple hundred years earlier. The vast and continuing success of the Vanguard Group, married to the epic story of its idealistic creation and implementation, definitively teaches that fundamental lesson that has become the class's center and circumference—ideals are real, they are one's greatest investment, and one buys in not via money; but via character, integrity, and action in the service of principles and one's peers. By humbling itself before the simple rules of arithmetic and principled common sense, Vanguard's returns have regularly outpaced the vast majority of funds; and I tell the students that even greater returns can be found by taking Bogle's words to heart; by underlining and highlighting Battle (as I began to do before even buying the book in Carolina), and following all the classical references on out towards their sources. For those classical wellsprings of the soul shall never run dry; and while Vanguard has enriched millions of investors, Bogle's greater gifts are his words—his immortal call to adventure and action, backed by the epic story of his own ventures defined by action.

VIII. CREATE'S Elixir: Ideals In Innovation & Patents

• • Our colleges, universities, and business schools should be at the very heart of entrepreneurial capitalism as the biggest contributors to the changing economic landscape. But they are not . . . . Instead of aiding economic change, they are in many cases a hindrance, which is one of the greatest ironies of our age. Many—if not most—of our great universities were founded by entrepreneurs and were intended to be entrepreneurial in their own right, but they have not turned out that way.—Carl Schramm, The Entrepreneurial Imperative
  • This ignorance of Greek wisdom should be of crucial interest to every American—not because the West is being supplanted by some global multiculturalism (as so many academics proclaim), but quite the opposite: because its institutions and material culture are now overwhelming the world. The Greeks—and the Greeks alone—bequeathed us constitutional government, individual rights, freedom of expression, an open economy, civilian control of the military, separation of religious and political authority, private property, free scientific inquiry and open dissent. And for better or worse, these are the things most on this earth now desire . . . . But it is foolish—and dangerous—to embrace these conventions of the West without understanding that the Greeks also insisted that such energy was to be monitored and restrained by a host of cultural protocols that have nearly disappeared: civic responsibility, philanthropy, a world view that is rather absolute, a belief that life is not nice, but tragic and ephemeral (Greek words both), a chauvinism of the middle class and an insistence on self-criticism. The death of the Greeks means an erasure of an entire way of looking at the world, a way diametrically opposite to the new gods that now drive America: therapeutics, moral relativism, blind allegiance to progress and the glorification of material culture. Who Killed Homer? Victor Davis Hanson & John Heath—http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1998/sepoct/articles/homer.html And so it is that the need and place for the present invention, and the classical video games it would exalt, is emphasized.

So it is that we propose a game world that exalts a novel fellowship; either within a university or independent of one; that seeks to combine entrepreneurship's rugged action with the inspiration and wisdom of the Great Books and Classics; that renders ideals real in innovation and performs the classical ideals in the contemporary context. No large sums of funding are requested to develop such novel video games, which could be built by layering classical ideals and the present algorithms of the present patent on top of and within existing game engines; but rather enough to continue the humble service to the classical ideals, which were given freely. Bolstered by unyielding passion and commitment, and an ever-growing fellowship of students, faculty, and professionals; the long-term dividends on a modest investment will be great for developers of the early games based on this patent, as we let antiquity's ideals guide innovation.

My physics Ph.D. dissertation was entitled “Multiple Unit Artificial Retina Chipset to Aid the Visually Impaired and Enhanced CMOS Phototransistors.” Supported with generous grants from the Fight for Sight Foundation and NSF, the dissertation won a Merrill Lynch Innovations award for research with commercial potential; and I got to dine with David Komansky, then Merrill's CEO, on the top floor of the World Trade Center's Windows on The World Restaurant, before it was tragically brought down on 9/11. It was actually the very same week that Long Term Capital Management—headed by a couple Nobel Laureates in economics, lost a couple billion in a sudden collapse, suggesting that physical engineering is generally of more use in helping people see long-term returns than financial engineering. A few weeks later Merrill Lynch would hire Henry Blodget to say one thing while thinking another as an analyst. Henry's a bit older than me, and although he attended Yale and I Princeton, I doubt that he was ever assigned The Iliad either, as it seems the ivies had run the numbers and determined that the classical spirit gets in the way of short-term profiteering:

• • For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.—Achilles, The Iliad

Imagine a video game that let one place honor above all else.

Eliot Spitzer published Blodget's emails in which Blodget stated publicly “We do not see much more downside to the shares,” while writing privately, “ATHM is such a piece of crap!” Spitzer also attended Princeton, and I do not suppose anyone ever assigned The Odyssey to him either. The present invention would thus serve a need of education those on Wall Street, or any other profession, which are all declining to serve the bottom line over the higher ideals, with a video game that exalted and rewarded higher ideals. For Socrates and Aristotle and Plato all understood that the young must be taught the difference between good and bad, between right and wrong, if we are to avoid a “Grand Theft” society, where Blodget and Spitzer take what they want and hire prostitutes, just like a player in GTA. Both Blodget and Spitzer would benefit immensely from the educational and spiritual value of the present invention. When offered the opportunity to stay forever young with the Goddess Calypso, Odysseus states:

• • Goddess and mistress, don't be angry with me,
  • I know very well Penelope,
  • For all her virtues, would pale beside you.
  • She's only human, and you are a goddess,
  • Eternally young. Still, I want to go back.
  • My heart aches for the day I return to my home.
  • If some god hist me heard as I sail the dark purple,
  • I'll weather it like the sea-bitten veteran I am.
  • God knows I've suffered and had my share of sorrows
  • In war and at sea. I can take more if I have to.—The Odyssey 5.215-24

The freshmen love these words, as it is perhaps the most often referenced passage in their papers and classroom discussions. Blodget and Spitzer could have benefited from taking The Iliad and The Odyssey to heart, as well as The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, and I pledge to make sure that the rising generation is afforded this vast and enduring wealth. “God knows I've suffered and had my share of sorrows. In war and at sea. I can take more if I have to.” And so it is that the video games exalted by the present invention will exalt those Homeric ideals. The main character may suffer and sacrifice to serve the higher ideals, but only by them shall they ever make it home.

I never sought to patent the artificial retina research, as it was supported by the taxpayers; and its purpose was to help the blind. And I felt that Faraday, Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Einstein, Brillouin, et al. had already done the heavy lifting—I merely had the opportunity to combine the physics in a novel manner. Call me idealistic, or even naïve during the dotcom era, but Benjamin Franklin had never patented his innovations, and the present invention would foster games in which one might also give their intellectual wealth, or any wealth for that matter, freely. Though he could have profited immensely from numerous inventions including the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, he wrote:

• • Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.—Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography
  • Carl Schramm echoes the sentiments of Franklin's words:
  • Despite bureaucracies and high costs, universities create huge amounts of new knowledge. Unfortunately, they have looked upon their research activities recently as a way to become rich, by selling the intellectual property produced, instead of—as historically had been done—making it available for free as a public good. Carl Schramm, The Technology Transfer Mess, Universities and the Entrepreneurial Imperative, The Entrepreneurial Imperative

The fundamental flaw of technology transfer departments is that they often try to transfer the technology out of the innovator's hands—an action that just as often results in the innovator transferring themselves 3,000 miles away, along with their technology and innovations. The ideal technology transfer office would be a copy of the US Constitution, and thus a novel game implied by this present invention may implement a Constitution in place of a tech transfer department. Schramm writes,

• • The proliferation of offices of technology transfer that can be found on at least three hundred fifty campuses, compared with the very small number of discovery-producing universities, suggests that many schools have unrealistic perceptions of their faculties' research. If you divide the aggregate revenues resulting from university research by the number of technology transfer offices, you find that each university on average is receiving just $3 million annually, a small amount given the tens of billions of research dollars universities receive every year.—Carl Schramm, The Technology Transfer Mess, Universities and the Entrepreneurial Imperative, The Entrepreneurial Imperative

Schools such as Stanford respect the innovators; and are duly rewarded, as the founders of the likes of Yahoo, Google, and Silicon Graphics are allowed to grow their ventures to fruition. “If you're smart enough to invent it, you're smart enough to own it,” I teach my class, which sometimes grates against the MBA mythology which generally preaches “manager's capitalism” which relies on the transfer of wealth and financial engineering, as opposed to the creation of wealth and physical engineering. Bogle time and again reminds us that “capitalism without owners will fail.” And the true owners of are those who take the risk—the investors, innovators, and creators. Innovators ought own their innovations, investors ought own their investments, and creators ought own their creations, with the same passion Charleton Heston delivered Moses's lines in Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments:

• • The evil that men should turn their brothers into beasts of burden, to be stripped of spirit, and hope, and strength . . . . If there is a god, he did not mean this to be so.

Grad students and young professors ought remember Leonidas's words. When King Xerxes told the Spartans to surrender their weapons, King Leonidas answered, “come and take them!” Sentiments Heston echoed with, “They will pry this rifle from my cold, dead hands!”

And so it is that garners may embody the same strong sentiments in games implied and fostered by the present invention, as they fight for the Bill of Rights.

All too often one hears that it's one type of person who is suited to founding and inventing—the “entrepreneur”—and another, who wears a suit and has an MBA, who is better suited to owning and managing—to sprinkling the magic MBA dust on the technology or pension fund or student debt and “transferring” it. But I imagine Steven Jobs, Mark Cuban, and Richard Branson would disagree; along with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, and all the grad students who are pushed around by the wealth-transfer bureaucrats and bullies—grad students such as Achilles, who delivers this speech to Agamemnon who has just taken Achille's prize:

You bloated drunk,

With a dog's eyes and a rabbit's heart!

You've never had the guts to buckle on armor in battle

Or come out with the best fighting Greeks

On any campaign! Afraid to look Death in the eye,

Agamemnon? It's far more profitable

To hang back in the army's rear—isn't it?—

Confiscating prizes from any Greek who talks back

And bleeding your people dry. There's not a real man

Under your command . . . .

The Iliad, I.236-245

The present invention would inspire games in which one could speak Achille's classic words to modern bureaucrats of the wealth-seizing fiatocracy. By and by we gain insight into the incentives University bureaucracies/fiatocracies might have to phase out the Greats, and we see that the novel video games described in this invention are opposed by the fiactocracy's faculties, who have been bought and paid for with federal dollars. The misguided “tech-transfer/wealth-transfer” philosophy, which counters Western Civilization's central tents, shines forth in today's financial industry, as the University justifies the vast costs of MBA and JD educations with degrees that entitle the holder to engage in postmodern wealth transfer. Bogle writes,

• • The problem goes far beyond the few renegades I have listed as bad apples. The traditional nature of capitalism has been distorted, and today's version is riddled with problems reflected in serious manipulation of financial statements. Indeed, since the market crash, some 1,570 publicly owned firms have restated their earlier financial statements, including come of our largest global corporations, such as Royal Dutch/Shell, the giant oil company, Schering-Plough, Qwest, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Xerox, and Halliburton.—Battle, page 22
  • Two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson said, “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government in a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” The recent era of manager's capitalism presents one more example of the consequences of allowing “the aristocracy of free reign.”—Battle, page 40

So it is that the less one teaches Bogle, Jefferson, and the rugged classics, the more one is generally paid, as the deconstruction of classical ideals is more profitable in the “rotten barrel's” realm, and thus opportunities abound for the present invention, which counters the prevailing fanboy/faculty wisdom. The mythology preached from on high is presented like this: there is one kind of person who is best suited to working and saving in pension plans and 401ks; and another who is best suited to gambling those savings—risking other peoples' collective investments and pocketing the lion's share of the rewards, privatizing profits while socializing losses. After a few years of studying soulless case studies and neglecting the classics, and a couple hundred grand, one can join the wealth-transfer club; which lawyers and MBAs train for by playing GTA. The present invention implies and exalts superior games with classical spirit and soul, and wherein exalted ideas have exalted consequences; when rendered real by matching word and deed.

At the end of the most performed, quoted, studied, and produced play in Western literature—a fine play, penned by Hollywood's most produced screenwriter, which we read at the end of the AE&T class—Hamlet contemplates a lawyer's skull:

Hamlet

• • There's another: why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha?

Shakespeare brings the higher value of long-term wealth into focus, as do Bogle, Buffett, and Keynes, who differentiate between prudent capital allocation, investing, and entrepreneurial risk-taking on the one hand, and gambling (oft with other peoples' money these days) on the other:

• • During the recent era, we have paid a high price for the shift that Keynes accurately predicted. As professional institutional investors moved their focus from the wisdom of long-term investment—what Keynes called “a steady stream of enterprise”—to the folly of short-term speculation, “the capital development of a country became the by-product of activities of a casino.” Just as he warned, “when enterprise becomes a mere bubble on a whirlpool of speculation, the job of capitalism is likely to be ill done.”—Bogle's Battle, p. 98

And today the casino games are a bit like a game of poker where a bully keeps betting big. His bluff is called, and he reveals a worthless hand. He loses his chips, calls the Federal Reserve, and he's back in the game with a fresh stack of chips, “to maintain liquidity and stability in the poker game.” 'Tis entrepreneurship of the highest order—this seemingly riskless risk, the only problem being that where financial engineering rules supreme; art, culture, and the soul decline, as Dante noted. For there are those precious entities that cannot be bought, are never sold, and can only be earned via integrity and action. Capital has never created character, though jealous of the natural, higher wealth, capital—mere capital—that which is so often printed while Great Books must wait to be written in blood, sweat, and tears—has oft opposed character. But nobody has ever bought their way into the Canon, and thus the Great Books are priceless; and priceless opportunities abound to render video games with their deep and exalted meanings, via simple, moral, unifying algorithms.

In his interview with Bill Moyers, Bogle sums the financial industry up with:

• • “My estimate is that the financial sector takes $560 billion a year out of society,” Bogle explains to Bill Moyers. “Banks, money managers, insurance companies, certainly annuity providers. They're all subtracting value from the economy.”—http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/profile.html

CREATE'S goal is to do for the artist and entrepreneur what Vanguard did for the investor—to teach creators—inventors and innovators—to be owners; and to foster novel web applications that provide them opportunities to protect and profit from their content—to bypass the middlemen. Just as manager's capitalism has come to eclipse the more exalted owner's capitalism, aggregator's capitalism has come to replace creator's capitalism in the content realm. Both of these transformations can be traced to the exaltation of the bottom line over the higher ideals, the steady erosion of classical precepts and natural rights that plagues cultures that forget the art of classic storytelling, the privatization of profits and socialization of risks, the errantly preached non-value of the individual artist and vast worth of the group that has been claimed by the mere aggregator, and a redefining of entrepreneurship—from the creation of wealth to the transfer of wealth—from physical engineering to financial engineering; and an exaltation of creative accounting over the creative arts. The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to oppose the wealth transfer in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed.

Not only is it our right to own the fruits of our labors, but it is our duty. Carl Schramm writes of this “entrepreneurial imperative” which seems ever more important, considering the current state of the economy and even the greater value that has been lost throughout our culture.

• • The only uniquely American resource at our disposal is entrepreneurial capitalism, and it is imperative that we nurture it. We must make sure that developing entrepreneurial systems reward risk takers who set out to be creative and innovative, who produce a product or a service that allows us to do something better, faster, cheaper. It is the resulting efficiency of their efforts that permits wealth to be redeployed in ways that produce more wealth.—Carl Schramm, Universities and the Entrepreneurial Imperative

In far too many ways our universities neglect this classical calling. Far too often our undergraduate programs teach the classics as the exception as opposed to the rule, and even when taught, they are taught as entities that are not all that useful. Mere capital is exalted over labor and creation, placing the cart in front of the horse and exalting the arrogance by which trillions of dollars are not earned, but transferred.

Perhaps the decline and debauchery all have a common source—a fiat currency which naturally undermines rugged individualism, innovation, and hard, dedicated work by devaluing it all via the act of creating money out of thin air. Gresham's Law states that bad money drives good money out of circulation, and fiat currency drives honor, integrity, and the classical, epic soul out of the culture. Fiat currency is a jealous currency, and it will have no other currencies before it. Fiat regimes must eventually drive out and destroy any cultural underpinnings which emphasize thrift, honesty, hard work; replacing unalterable covenants with mere contracts that can be deconstructed for profit by fiat lawyers. And so it is that fiat regimes must over time favor the destruction of the Great Books and Classics, the razing of epic, exalted soul, and the Western cowboy who in years past would have called the bluff and ridden into town for the showdown. Nor longer are we afforded classical, exalted art. In the original Beowulf our hero kills Grendel's mother. In the Hollywood remake, he sleeps with her. In the original 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy lives and the bad guy goes to jail. In the remake the good guy dies and the bad guy rides away free; as modern, storyless Hollywood producers get away with murder, just like their brethren in economics departments and Hedge Funds. Today's bestselling video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto, heralded as High Art by so many, celebrates jacking cars, shooting police, and hiring and killing prostitutes. The exact same lack of respect for private property, law, and life are enacted by the fiat systems' lawyers in a far more dire game called Grand Theft Constitution, which has altered the original text and intent by adding abortion, the right of a president to declare wars, no fault divorce, and the right of a private banking cartel to print money. The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

• • Even a much more moderate inflation, however, shakes the foundations of a country's social structure. The millions who see themselves deprived of security and well-being become desperate. The realization that they have lost all or most all of what they had set aside for a rainy day radicalizes their entire outlook. They tend to fall easy prey to adventurers aiming at dictatorship, and to charlatans offering patent-medicine solutions. The sight of some people profiteering while the rest suffer infuriates them. The effect of such an experience is especially strong among the youth. They learn to live in the present and scorn those who try to teach them “old-fashioned” morality and thrift.—Ludwig von Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism

If the money is created out of thin air in the first place, how can one complain when the Wall Street bankers take one's salary back by pilfering their pensions, or tempting and deceiving them in a stock or housing bubble? The current fiat system has created legions of proud fiatocracies, headed by snall-souled men, all united in promoting diverse forms of groupthink which undermine honesty, integrity, and classic entrepreneurship where the risk-taker, not the money printer and their financial/government industry, get the reward. Printing money is great work, if one can get it, and even if one can't, one might become a university president and oversee thousands of students being placed in massive debt to fund morally and intellectually bankrupt bureaucracies, which better prepare the students to serve as serfs in the fiatocracy's fiefdoms, by denying the exalted virtues of the classical soul and that divine sense of individuality which is exalted in all the Great Works of Western Civilization which have been removed form the fiatocracy's universities. Professors benefit immensely from student debt, and oftentimes universities even receive kickbacks from the student-loan industry. Rarely do professors speak out against massive student debt, as did Dane and the ancient poets and prophets. Fund a professor's summer voyages to C. S. Lewis conferences in England and Dante conferences in Florence, and they are quite content to ignore Lewis's and Dante's deeper teachings. The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

Fiat money is the deeper source of all the postmodern decline and decadence, which destroys truth, natural, intrinsic value, the rule of law, and rationality; and replaces it all with arbitrary claims bolstered by an elite fiat class, who were soulless enough to not mind the deconstruction and desecration of the culture in the fiatocracy's most elite schools. The Federal Reserve creates a dollar out of thin air and proclaims unto all “this is a dollar,” and it funnels a tiny percentage of said dollar to fiat lawyers who deconstruct the Constitution, adding abortion and the right of a private banking cartel to create money out of thin air, and they step forth and proclaim to all “this is the Constitution.” Another small percentage is funneled to fiat economists who run the numbers and say, “yup, broken homes, broken families, subprime mortgages, vast debts and deficits foreign wars on foreign shores, while we can't even defend our Constitution against little lawyers at home—it's all looking good.” The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

While the classics teach the virtue of matching word and deed, fiat universities teach the art of profiting via saying one thing and doing another, as did Henry Blodget and Mary Meeker and countless other fiat heroes, as what does it profit a man to gain a soul and lose their chance at fiat-funded titles and tenure? The fiat lawyers were trained by the fiat-funded feminist instructors who replaced Odysseus's character, honor, and integrity with dumbed-down, diluted poetry, which is the best that fiat currencies can buy. Very few fiat economists take the time to understand Austrian economics, as it would only hamper their fiat-funded careers; and studying any form of economic and/or spiritual reality is a liability on the modern campus, where the marketing and accounting professors are highest paid, as they teach the students how to create the Enrons and corrupt the Bear Steams. Thus the video games inspired by the present invention will oppose the faculty/fanboys opinions. The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

I have sat in silence throughout many faculty meetings, as it is impolite to broach the Great Books and classics. The last time I spoke out in an academic setting was during Toni Morrison's creative writing class at Princeton, when she said, “Don't think I haven't notice you haven't said anything all semester.” I suggested that we ought have an idea of a plot structure which dropped the reader off at a new destination, in addition to showing them cool scenery along the way, as did Shakespeare with Hamlet. “High aspirations for the afternoon,” Toni joked, and the class moved on to analyzing the next plotless, characterless story about some girl's sexual encounters at boarding school—a girl who is a friend who has had two abortions and is to this day not married. I tried to warn her . . . long ago . . . . The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals and the unborn, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

Fiatocracies have the amazing ability to exalt groupthinkers to unheralded heights, and suddenly string theorists are physicists, feminists are poets, and soulless men who never read nor reference the Great Books are university presidents, surrounded by the student-debt-funded burgeoning administration of their fiatocratic fiefdom, who rose to power by navigating by their dictator's will, while penning middling grant proposals replete with buzzwords such as “green energy,” “smaller carbon footprint,” and “social entrepreneurship.” Many of them are women, who have been told that men robbed them of the right to create airplanes, electricity, Shakespeare's works, the lightbulb, powered flight, artificial retinas, computers, and relativity; and they are getting their revenge by creating fiat bureaucracies which exalt and profit off the 50% divorce rate and the war between the sexes that destroyed the classic American family—and needless war is the exact opposite of entrepreneurship and innovation. You would think they would thank the men for doing all the work all these years, but the genius of feminism is that it criminalizes the creator and places women on the frontlines of the fiatocracies, prints gobs of cash for the propaganda and programs, teaches them the perks of divorce and debauchery, and sends them forth to claim that which is not rightfully theirs, and to bring it on back to the banker's corporate state. 'Tis another reason they don't want the young students reading Homer's Odyssey and witnessing the feminine dangers of Calypso, the Sirens, Cicre, and Agamemnon's wife. And just as they replaced Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelley with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, they must replace Homer's virtuous heroine—Penelope, who defends the sanctity of the home via her virtue—with the modern corporate woman, who serves not the higher ideals and the family, but the corporation's bottom line. As the fiatocracy must destroy replace the home with the corporate state, The Odyssey must be banned, along with Shakespeare and the Bible, unless they are taught to be deconstructed. The present invention would counter expert fanboy/faculty opinion by exalting games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

Fiat economists spend entire careers penning indecipherable papers to deny that most fundamental tenet of economics, “Thou shalt not steal,” but as it does not profit a man to gain tenure and lose their soul, they are soon forgotten by eternity, as are all the fiat-funded papers, degrees, titles, and diplomas. “The world will little note, nor long remember . . . .”

And as true innovation, insight, and useful creation are far more rare than common, everyone wins in a fiatocracy where grades, titles, and currencies are all generously inflated—everyone wins except for the innovator, author, entrepreneur, creator, and unborn. And as only the latter create true, long-term wealth, fiatocracies ultimately abort opportunities for future generations by desecrating the classical heritage, as all fiat currencies must so as to protect the false worth of the currency. As a paper dollar is ultimately worthless, the fiatocracy can only profit by trading those dollars for something, and so they fund legions of mediocre groupthinkers to go forth and claim tax and tuition dollars, whereupon they and their friends transform those dollars into true assets, including land, gold, and untouchable administrative positions in university bureaucracies; which carry lofty, ironic tiles such as “director of entrepreneurship.” Their failures—year, after, year, after year—become their virtues, as the lack of classic, rugged entrepreneurship they inspire becomes the platform upon which they raise more funds to further destroy entrepreneurship's spirit. As their bureaucracies burgeon and their coffers are filled, we are all warned, “we must all tread lightly and speak softly, for much is at stake if we fail to exalt entrepreneurship this year.” The groupthinkers all nod and agree at the lavish year-end dinner, as the lone innovator and thinker amongst them is silently sent packing by those seemingly purposeless committee meetings whose purpose is to silently criminalize and excommunicate the exalted intellectual and innovator, for the bureaucracy knows that all true wealth comes from the bureaucracy. The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

And one would be wise to not write such words as these, unless one places them far along in a paper filled with classical references, which will serve to discourage and confound the common academic, like the concrete barriers placed before the Whitehouse after 9/11.

• • Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.—Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress

Far too often our law schools and MBA programs view the world as zero-sum financial arenas, and prepare the students to partake not in the entrepreneurial act of wealth creation; but in the bureaucratic act of wealth transfer, either via big government or big business; which are all too often working together, side-by-side right next to the money pump, bringing to mind the end of Animal Farm—when the police finally arrive, they look from man to pig; from pig to man, and they cannot tell the difference. New York Times investigative reporter David Cay Johnston eloquently reports on this in: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You with the Bill.

Google's first ten hires were engineers, as were Michael Dell's and Bill Gates'—neither of whom had a college degree, let alone an MBA. Dell and Microsoft were profitable long before they ever sought venture financing; so it is curious that MBA programs so often host venture capital competitions; as Socrates reminds us that virtue does not come from money; but all money and lasting wealth derive from virtue—from rugged, honest innovation. Starbucks, Walmart, and Barnes & Noble were all profitable single-store enterprises for many years before they ever opened that second store. And the Wright Brothers funded the inception of the entire flight industry not with massive government grants—half of which would go to the administration and the tech-transfer office; but with proceeds from their Ohio bicycle shop married to classic, rugged ingenuity; as they risked their lives to engineer controlled flight. Yes—they went from building bicycles to building airplanes. Surely the university can go from teaching not all that much to teaching the Greats.

And so it is that classical innovation in academia—teaching Bogle alongside Socrates, Campbell, and Homer in every business school, while calling upon students to follow their higher ideals in their own journeys—would result in untold long-term wealth—that higher wealth that arises via creation, innovation, and technological engineering, as opposed to that illusory and fleeting wealth that bureaucratic wealth transfer grants smaller souls, at the expense of creators, workers, and future generations. Entrepreneurship is about the few enriching the many via the creation of meaning, goods, services, and jobs; while bureaucracy favors the many enriching the few via the transfer of risk to the many, and the transfer of the wealth to the few. The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

Wealth transfer is the primary motive of that recent postmodern pursuit-financial engineering. The words “financial engineering” conjure up an image of the construction of a giant funnel, with the artist, creator, worker, and investor at the big end. Our artists, poets, and scientists ought be encouraged to create freely under the guidance of classical law—to engineer and own their innovations; while our accountants, lawyers, and MBAs ought be encouraged to refrain from becoming too creative. Simple arithmetic, common sense law, and truth in advertising would suffice.

Though I never sought to patent my dissertation, I believe that creators and artists ought be afforded the ability to protect their intellectual property to the fullest extent of the spirit of the US Constitution which was founded upon the Mosaic law Twain referenced. For the act of creation—the source of all art and enterprise—is an individualistic pursuit; and where individual rights are sacrificed so the few can profit from the many—so that technocrats can profit from the artistic soul of the internet without ever compensating the creators of the soul; artists, and thus art and culture, will suffer. Artists, who are generally most generous and create for free, must be afforded maximum opportunities to protect and profit from their creations; so as to provide greater incentive to create. Again, the Founding Fathers already set this down, and again, all we need to do is get out of the way of the Constitution, and let its ideals guide and inspire tomorrow's technology:

• • The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;—The United States Constitution

For not only do authors create art; but that art is the source of law which comes to us from epic stories that speak to the soul—stories that must be perpetually performed in the living language. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and any renaissance must be lead by artists and poet-soldiers. Those same property rights celebrated in The Odyssey, whence Odysseus reclaims his home from the elite mob of managers, must find their way into the technology; wherein they might someday forestall piracy and protect future films and games celebrating The Odyssey.

CREATE, and the video games it seeks to develop and foster based on this invention, seeks to empower creators with new technologies endowed with classical soul and constitutional rights, and the following patents have been filed for video games and future ventures aimed at exalting a renaissance. The law which underlies property rights comes from epic story, and epic story is what is missing from video games. So it is that one might imagine a video game world which renders the dire consequences of the individual's failing to fight for natural rights and property rights; while also rendering a world of peace and prosperity when the player successfully serves ideals.

The following patents may foster further patents, as well as research and development for years to come, and it would be great fun to involve students in rendering them real. Like the artificial retina project, I am not so interested in profiting off of these, as I am in creating wealth and proving that ideals in innovation are yet a great investment. Artists ought be afforded their constitutional rights, and video garners ought be granted more exalted experiences. Here are the abstracts for a journey which has yet to begin:

22Nets: Method, System, and Apparatus for Building Content and Talent Marketplaces and Archives Based on a Social Network

The novel social network described herein allows those who create and upload content, as well as those who aggregate content and build the network, to profit in novel manners. A method and system allows users, who create content archives and marketplaces in which individuals and content in the database are connected by mutually defined relationships determined by the content creators/owners, uploaders, aggregators, and/or viewers of said content, to better profit from the networks they build. Higher-quality archives and marketplaces result. A tiered commission system, proportional to the degrees of separation in the network, provides a revenue share for creators and viewers who participate in and create content and/or marketplaces. Information inherent within the nodes is mined so as to afford a tiered revenue-sharing system. An improved method of content distribution empowering creators of content and participants is disclosed herein, along with a superior social network.

System and Method for Allowing Creators, Artists, and Owners to Protect and Profit from Content: The 45 Revolver

The present invention offers novel and superior means for protecting and profiting from digital content. The rights-centric, creator-centric digital rights management application will lead to greater revenue and rights for artists, and a new era of creator's entrepreneurship, as opposed to the dominant aggregator's entrepreneurship. The present invention offers a simple interface for creators, artists, users, and owners to define rights, select from a plurality of DRM options, advertising options, watermarking options, thumbnailing options, syndication options, and publish, share, sell, and distribute their content in a plurality of manners. This invention has far-ranging ramifications, as it causes DRM providers, device manufacturers, web companies, social networks, and content marketplaces to more directly compete with one-another to provide the creator and content owner the best compensation for their work. Creators can bypass the traditional and new middlemen, define their rights, sell their content, and enhance profits.

Morality System and Method for Video Game: System and Method for Creating Story, Deeper Meaning and Emotions, Enhanced Characters and AI, and Dramatic Art in Video Games

This present invention pertains to introducing morality and epic storytelling into the realm of video games, resulting in video games with superior, deeper game play, expanded markets, and longer-lasting brands. The ability to render deeper emotion, story, and exalted dramatic arts within the realm of video games has been a long sought-after “holy grail” throughout the video game industry. The prior art demonstrates how others have failed and are failing to deliver more meaningful and engaging games endowed with epic storytelling. This present invention provides the missing key to realizing epic storytelling, deeper emotional involvement, and higher art in video games.

And the present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight for Constitutional ideals and property rights and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

VIII. Conclusion: If We can Keep it

• • Writing as Publius in The Federalist, no. 6, on Nov. 14, 1787, Alexander Hamilton used words that, in the context of this day, two-plus-centuries later, should serve as a warning to us. “Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of . . . idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption form their imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape?” . . . Hamilton answered his question with another question, this one rhetorical: “Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our . . . conduct that we are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?” Similarly, if we citizens of today can only accept that such a happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue is also yet remote in today's flawed version of American capitalism, we can begin the hard work of fixing its shortcomings. The time to begin that world anew is now.—Bogle, The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism, p. 242

And so we march. We march for the renaissance.

The renaissance will be built not by financial engineering, but by artistic entrepreneurship and physical engineering—via rugged, idealistic entrepreneurship. Natural rights and property rights will again be celebrated in living art and invention; in story and technology, romance, marriage and the family; in education and government—in Hollywood and the Heartland; on Wall Street and Main Street. And in conclusion, I have naught but thanks to all those who have afforded this opportunity—all those I can never thank enough with words; but only in life and action, in a most humble attempt to serve as nobly as they served. And so we march . . . .

As Benjamin Franklin concluded the Constitutional Convention with, “We've given you a republic, if you can keep it,” let us also conclude in the humble spirit of only just beginning this journey, with a long road ahead for this fellowship. Kipling echoes Franklin's “if you can keep it” with IF:

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master,

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And—which is more—you'll be a Man, my son!—Rudyard Kipling

The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

The spirit of the renaissance resounded throughout the second HJEF: HerosJourneyRenaissance.org:

There's something going on. A renaissance is rising—artists, authors, and inventors are turning towards the classical ideals so as to render them real in the living culture. A fellowship of creators, each walking the hero's journey by the immortal stars of classical antiquity, is seeking to serve the soul in art and literature—in video games, music, and film. It's been a long time coming, as the rising generation has been seeking that third act—that classical, epic thunder that we can call our own.

Come join us on March 8th as we celebrate the ultimate Renaissance Man—Leonardo da Vinci—while saluting those marking rugged journeys in the realms of screenwriting, video games, film, academia, and robotics—robots inspired by da Vinci's designs.

The Dark Ages lasted for hundreds of years—from 476 to 1000 AD. Art, innovation, and literature declined along with contemporary written history. A general demographic decline accompanied limited cultural achievements. Aristotle wrote “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence,” and as they turned away from the classics and higher art and towards bread and circuses—towards reality TV and spectacle—the soul, and thus civilization, faltered.

The Italian Renaissance, which spanned the period from the end of the 1400's to about 1600, sailed beyond the Dark Ages by the immortal stars of classical antiquity. Renaissance scholars again sought out the Great Books and Classics in the ancient monastic libraries and incorporated them in education and culture. And so too do we march on—following the lead of the immortal heroes such as da Vinci who stated, “Who sows virtue reaps honor,” and “Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” Da Vinci wrote, “the depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserve” and Martin Luther King Jr. agreed, “If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” And the title of John C. Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism says it all, as it suggests we read Adam Smith in order, with A Theory of Moral Sentiments preceding The Wealth of Nations, for as Socrates stipulated, all true wealth comes from virtue—the immortal soul, and not virtue from wealth.

Vast opportunities exist to incorporate the soul of The Iliad and The Odyssey—of Shakespeare, the Bible, and The Inferno—in video games. The Mona Lisa, two dimensional and stationary, yet towers over the female characters in modern games in spirit and soul; as do Dante's Beatrice and Odysseus's Penelope. Knowledge of the classics—the spiritual eternities—not material wealth—became the true mark of wealth during the Renaissance, and so shall it be again. The movie 300 demonstrated that the rising generation is longing for the classical spirit and soul; and Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 is revolutionizing academia with its simple precept that the spirit of our law and literature—of The Constitution and Hamlet—derive from the same place—the classical Judeo Christian heritage. And so that which had been divided into business, law, film, art, and accounting; is reunited in truth and the simplicity of soul—in a classical liberal arts education—in a foundational renaissance.

There are two Hero's Journeys in every class—the first is through the Great Books, and the second is the one each student walks alone—in a business plan or screenplay for their living venture; for the reason we read the Greats is not for tenure, but to embolden the natural ideals of our soul and gain the courage to follow our better angels and nobler dreams. The Odyssey has lasted over 2800 years because it reminds us of that immortal justice—eventually truth prevails.

Opportunity abounds to not only read those dusty old texts, but to render their ideals real in the living context via action. We've been leaving billions on the shelves—billions and far more, including those mythical entities which cannot be counted, but which count for everything. And so we march—we march for the renaissance, wherein we will realize the novel videogames and technologies with soul exalted by the present invention.

PRIOR ART AND FURTHER OBJECTS AND ADVANTAGES OF INVENTION

The present invention would exalt games that would allow the player to fight to exalt Constitutional ideals and oppose the wealth transfer both in word and deed, to defend the classical ideals, and exalt a brave new world where honor, justice, and character prevailed; and marriages endured, as did Penelope's and Odysseus's.

The genius of the fiatocracy is that it funds both the foreign wars on the foreign shores, sending soldiers to die in far-off lands, while also funding the war-protesters, so as to distance themselves from the soldiers they send to die. They come out looking great, lauded both by their media and Hollywood, while the honorable end up both dead and disparaged by their media and Hollywood. The fiatocracy funds Grand Theft Auto, Tucker Max, Joyce Carol Oates, American Idol, and Dave Eggers as the highest art, while funding the deconstruction and death of Homer, Shakespeare, the Bible, along with the family, property rights, and the digital rights management for artist. Steven Jobs comes out against DRM, but secretly he loves it, as never in a million years shall he share the secret sauce of iTune's DRM. His DRM is DRM'd—kept secret and proprietary, and nobody else is allowed to use it. His position is that only the rich should be afforded DRM, while common artists and creators do not deserve it. But all technology tends towards the soulless—towards hiring and killing hookers, and that's why this novel invention will foster superior games, for it will allow the player to fight for classical, sacred, exalted ideals—to find players who share those ideals, form a fellowship, and battle for a higher cause, just world, faith, the family, the wisdom of the Great Books and Classics, the Consitution, the Gold standard, and more. Hiring and killing hookers, and being a nihilist a hole like Tucker Max, Dave Eggers, and Joyce Carol Oates is getting quite boring, and new video games will allow one to battle the fiatocracy's warlords and witches. Even the fanboys are longing for epic games with exalted ideals which rebel against the expert opinions, and that's what this game provides.

Imagine a video game which allowed one to fight all the good fights Ron Paul outlines in The Revolution: A Manifesto.

Table of Contents

• 1. The False Choices of American Politics
• 2. The Foreign Policy of the Founding Fathers
• 3. The Constitution
• 4. Economic freedom
• 5. Civil Liberties and Personal Freedom
• 6. Money: The Forbidden Issue in American Politics
• 7. The Revolution

A Reading List for a Free and Prosperous America

To date, no game allows one to fight for the US Constitution and a sound currency. No game allows one to fight for the Founding Father's original intent—for life, liberty, and happiness for all. No game allows one to fight for economic freedom beyond the fiat system that robs us all via the inflation tax. No game allows the player to quote Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Jefferson, Hazlitt, Jesus, Socrtes, and Moses in dialogue trees, nor via other means, en route to winning the hearts and minds of their people, rounding up and inspiring a group of rebel, and leading those rugged rebels in a battle founded upon ideas. No game allows one to fight Big Brother and ensure greater Civil Liberties and Personal Freedom. And certainly, no game allows the player to fight to implement the Constitutional Gold Standard, nor to take on the divorce regime, nor to protect the unborn.

The present invention would allow the themes of V is for Vendetta, Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead to be brought to life, as well as Orwell's 1984, which resembles the modern university. The plot of 1984 could be enhanced, and hope could be allowed for Winston Smith. Suppose that Winston was successful in speaking with and recruiting enough people for a revolt. If he was too upfront with his ideas, he might be put to death. If he was too coy, he would never reach them. If he was too persistent, he could offend some people. If he gave up to soon, he might lose loyal followers. At any rate, it would make a great and unique game, as Winston Smith went up against Big Brother. The plot of 1984 is described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four with:

The intellectual Winston Smith is a member of the Outer Party, lives in the ruins of London (the “chief city of Airstrip One”, a province of Oceania), who grew up in the post-World War II United Kingdom, during the revolution and the civil war. As his parents disappeared in the civil war, the English Socialism Movement (“Ingsoc” in Newspeak), put him in an orphanage for training and employment in the Outer Party.

His squalid existence consists of living in a one-room apartment, eating a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin. He is discontented, and keeps an illegal journal of dissenting, negative thoughts and opinions about The Party. If detected, it, and his eccentric behaviour, would result in torture and death by the Thought Police.

In his journal he explains thoughtcrime: Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. The Thought Police have two-way telescreens (in the living quarters of every Party member and in every public area), hidden microphones, and anonymous informers to spy potential thought-criminals who might endanger The Party. Children are indoctrinated to informing; to spy and report suspected thought-criminals—especially their parents.

Winston Smith is a bureaucrat in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, revising historical records to match The Party's contemporaneous, official version of the past. The revisionism is required so that the past reflect the shifts of the day in the Party's orthodoxy. Smith's job is perpetual; he re-writes the official record, re-touches official photographs, deleting people officially rendered as unpersons. The original or older document is dropped into a “memory hole” chute leading to an incinerator. Although he likes his work, especially the intellectual challenge of revising a complete historical record, he also is fascinated by the true past, and eagerly tries to learn more about that forbidden truth.

One day, in the office, a woman surreptitiously hands him a note. She is “Julia”, a dark-haired mechanic who repairs the Ministry of Truth's novel-writing machines. Before that day, he had felt deep loathing for her, based on his assumptions that she was a brainwashed, fanatically devoted member of the Party; particularly annoying to him is her red sash of renouncement of and scorn for sexual intercourse. His preconceptions vanish on reading her hand-printed note: “I love you”. After that, they begin a clandestine romantic relationship, first meeting in the countryside and at a ruined belfry, then regularly in a rented room atop an antiques shop in the city's proletarian neighbourhood. The shop owner chats him up with facts about the pre-revolutionary past, sells him period artifacts, and rents him the room to meet Julia. The lovers believe their hiding place paradisiacal (the shop keeper having told them it has no telescreen) and think themselves alone and safe.

As their romance deepens, Winston's views change, and questions Ingsoc. Unknown to him, the Thought Police have been spying on him and Julia. Later, when approached by Inner Party member O'Brien, Winston believes that he's come into contact with The Brotherhood, opponents of the Party. O'Brien gives him a copy of “the book”, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, a searing criticism of Ingsoc said to be written by the dissident Emmanuel Goldstein, the leader of the Brotherhood; it explains the perpetual war and exposes the truth behind the Party's slogan, “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.”

The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their sanctuary bedroom and they are separately interrogated at the Ministry of Love, where the regime's opponents are tortured and killed, but sometimes released (to be executed at a later date); Charrington, the shop keeper who rented them the room reveals himself an officer of the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Love torture chamber, O'Brien tells Smith that he will be cured of his hatred for the Party. During a session, he explains to Winston that torture's purpose is to alter his way of thinking, not to extract a fake confession, adding that once cured—accepting reality as the Party describes—he then will be executed; electroshock torture will achieve that, continuing until O'Brien decides Winston is cured.

One night, a dreaming Winston suddenly wakes, yelling: “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” O'Brien rushes in and questions him, and then sends him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love. This is where a person's greatest fear is forced upon him or her for the final re-education step: acceptance. Winston, who has a primal fear of rats, is shown a wire cage filled with starving rats and told that it will be fitted over his head like a mask, so that when the cage door is opened, the rats will bore into his face until it is stripped to the bone. Just as the cage brushes his cheek, he shouts frantically: “Do it to Julia!” The torture ends, Winston is returned to society, brainwashed to accept Party doctrine.

After his release, Winston and Julia fortuitously meet in a park. With distaste, they remember the “bad” feelings they once shared; they acknowledge having betrayed each other; they are apathetic. Torture and re-education were successful; Winston happily reconciled to his impending execution, and accepting the Party line about the past and the present. In his mind, he celebrates the false fact of a news bulletin reporting Oceania's recent, decisive victory over Eurasia. Winston imagines himself back at the Ministry of Love. He imagines the scene he created during his imprisonment of walking down the white hallway and being shot by the guard. He finally accepts that he loves Big Brother.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

The above plot could be brought to life in a video game, and too, it could be enhanced, exalted and deepened; and Winston could be given hope of living happily ever after with Julia. The family could be reunited and exalted, and the government could be battled via ideas and actions. Legions of followers could be recruited throughout the game, by the discussion and dissemination of ideas, and the legions of followers could help effect the revolution. Rebel to early, and all is lost, as the rebel forces are too small. Wait too long, and though the rebel forces will be larger, Big Brother will be even bigger. So it is that the present invention, by focusing on the role that ideas play in gaining friends and determining enemies, could exalt new game play. Plenty of violent action will be included of course, but unlike GOW, GTA, and the other ten billion games, the action will be backed by moral ideas. This is the last thing the fiatocracy wants—ideas, intelligence, morality, and the Constitution—and novel games could be imagined that would allow the player to battle the fiatocracy.

Wikipedia writes, “In the essay Why I Write, Orwell explains that all the serious work he wrote since the Spanish Civil War in 1936 was “written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.”[12] Therefore, Nineteen Eighty-Four is an anti-totalitarian cautionary tale about the betrayal of a revolution by its defenders. He already had stated distrust of totalitarianism and betrayed revolutions in Homage to Catalonia and Animal Farm. Coming Up For Air, at points, celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in Nineteen Eighty-Four.” So it is that Orwell was motivated by ideas and ideals, and was thus capable of creating art with soul; unlike the fanboys and feminists, who are interested in pretty graphics, postmodern poetry, and murder—the fanboys get to and hire and kill women, and the feminists get to kill the unborn, and everyone is happy and proud of their great and fleeting power that the fiatocracy has granted them.

Novel Weapons Implied by Invention: The Gold 45 Revolver

Imagine a game where the ultimate weapon—the gold 45 revolver—would only glow gold if the player did the right things throughout the game. The ultimate weapon would be inextricably linked to the highest moral character. Amoral or immoral characters would not be able to use the weapon. The revolver would not glow gold for amoral or immoral characters—it would never obtain its exalted, magical powers. To date, the prior art includes no weapon which only functions when the player is doing the right, or moral, thing. To date, the prior art includes no weapon which only functions to its highest potential when the player is walking the straight and narrow. To date, the prior art in video games contains no gun, nor any sort of weapon, whose higher powers are activated in proportion to the moral level of the character's character. Such a weapon may also be associated with my earlier patent application: USPTO Application #: 20070087798: Title: Morality system and method for video game: system and method for creating story, deeper meaning and emotions, enhanced characters and ai, and dramatic art in video games. Imagine the weapon of ideals and morality that could bring back the gold standard and stop all the corruption, theft, and never-ending growth of government and it accompanying demolition of those better angels of our nature. Imagine a weapon that could exalt faith, the family, and Natural Rights.

Only characters who made the correct moral choices would be afforded the priviledge of using the gold 45 revolver to its fullest power. Only characters who matched their virtuous words and deeds would be afforded the powers of the gold 45 revolver. Only characters who defined a moral world, by rendering their ideals real via action, would be afforded a gold revolver at the end. Only by moral actions would the 45 revolver ever glow gold in the hands of those who partook in moral actions throughout the game. The Gold 45 Revolver shows up in Autumn Rangers, The Real McCoy, The Tragedy of Drake Raft, The Legend of The Jolly Roger, and The Legend of McCoy Mountain.

• So if you climb up upon my Mountain,
• Looking for the Gold Revolver,
• Know mightier than the sword is the pen,
• His wife was Mary and Jesus loved her.
• Three Confederate sentinels were called,
• To kill three Union lookouts on the peaks,
• Two went forth in the thundering rain, one stalled,
• That conscience that makes us strong, makes us weak.
• And instead of killing the enemy,
• He strove for life and liberty for all,
• He died that night to set all of us free,
• The gun glowed gold as one last bluff was called.
• Where the sun don't shine, truth's light's in your voice,
• The gun glows gold when you've made the right choice.—The Legend of McCoy Mountain

The Gold 45 Revolver—A Novel Video Game Weapon

Back in the Civil War, there lived an abolitionist named Johnny Ranger McCoy. On Dec. 21, 1862, it was raining on McCoy Mountain. The next day The Battle of Glorietta Pass, known as the “Gettysburg of the West,” would be fought—the tipping point of the Civil War.

A Union patrol was marching South, unaware of the 300 Confederates planning an ambush on the Union's campsite come sunrise. That night, Confederate scouts reported that three Union Sentries had been posted on three nearby peaks.

Three of the toughest Confederate soldiers were sent forth in the thundering downpour to dispatch the three Union sentries—quickly and silently. Two of them completed their task. One of them didn't.

Johnny “Ranger” McCoy, his abolitionist soul awakened by Lincoln's most eloquent words, turned himself in and disclosed the Confederacy's plans. The alerted Union troops silently flanked the Confederates before sunrise, resulting in a massacre whence the 300 Confederates were killed.

The next day, Johnny McCoy was found hanging atop the mountain, with his wife and three of his four children. Some say the Confederates hung him as a traitor. Some say the Union hung him as a Confederate. And others say he hung himself, after seeing all his friends and countrymen die upon his betrayal. But I'm thinkin' he hung himself when he returned on home to find his wife and three of his four children hanging—hung by a Union patrol. Imagine a video game with the ultimate weapon—the Golden 45 Revolver. The revolver renders the player omnipotent, and it is the only weapon that can defeat The Consortium and its formidable leader—Ramone. The FPS video game centers around finding the Golden 45 Revolver, but where is the player to look?

There is only one place to find the Gold 45 Revolver—to look within. Only players who run through the game choosing the moral actions—rendering classical ideals real and serving a higher cause—ever find it. For the Gold 45 Revolver is just a normal Colt that his handled by a moral, humble hero.

The Gold 45 Revolver

Let me tell you a story or two.

US Marine Ranger McCoy returns on home to the United States after being shot down over Afghanistan, and now he's on the run. An invention of his from grad school, APRIL, was stolen and is now a massive artificial intelligence (AI) project at the Silicon Virtue Corporation in California. Silicon Virtue wants the codes to unlock APRIL's moral soul, so that they can reprogram her. The codes are encoded on a ring Ranger wears.

After being shot down, Ranger is rescued and taken to a base in Kuwait where government officials demand the ring. His old drill sergeant helps him escape, and Ranger stows away on an ocean liner and ends up in Charleston, S.C., where posing as a janitor, he starts building a second APRIL.

When Ranger was seventeen, he went riding with his girlfriend Beatrice on her birthday way back in Ohio. On by the farms they rode their two Arabians, until Beatrice broke into a gallop. Ranger followed as the Fourth of July fireworks went off, and they came to a river.

Beatrice wanted to cross, but Ranger said it was too dark and deep. Ranger handed her a birthday present—a ring with a turquoise stone, as pretty as her eyes. And they leaned into each-other in the moonlight.

Suddenly a flashlight snapped on and three men assaulted them, thinking Ranger was also a girl because of his long hair. Beatrice got away as they bound and gagged Ranger . . . and a horse's whinny and she was back—an old Colt .45 Revolver—the one her grandfather had given her—raised. And Ranger will never forget the way it caught the moonlight, glowing not silver, but gold, as she held it steady.

“Let him up!” she yelled.

The men stood up, shining a light on her.

Suddenly one of them drew a gun and fired.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

And the three men were dead.

Beatrice cuts him loose and they hop on her horse.

“You're bleeding,” he says.

“It's just a scratch . . . .” she says.

. . . And now, many years later, Ranger is building a second APRIL to contact the first before they hack into her deeper soul—a soul that was inspired by a tragic night long ago. Posing as a surfer/janitor, he lies low in Charleston, S.C., now and then going to a folksinger's show at a local café—Autumn Wests. She looked familiar . . . .

The agents find his lab and he's on the run again, all hope gone, with nothing left to do but drive out to California. He runs into Autumn Wests whose playing a show in Nashville, and she helps him out of a bind, recognizing him from Charleston.

So he rides with her, telling her the story; and they fall for each-other—two immortal souls striving for the natural eternity that is denied in this dumbed-down, debauched culture. Ranger gets her to stop drinking, and Autumn helps Ranger get over his fiancé who cheated on him. And Autumn decides their movement—their renaissance—should have a name—Autumn Rangers.

But the ring weighs on Ranger's conscience—he has to regain control of APRIL before they fully control her, or destroy her.

APRIL is being used to run massive hedge funds and bankrupt the country, and she begins sending Roboclone agents out to seek and destroy Ranger. The Roboclones find them, but they put up a fight, and in getting the ring back from a Roboclone, Autumn puts it on. Her gun starts glowing gold, and she takes out all the RoboColones. And she remembers who she is.

It turns out that APRIL created Autumn and copied her moral soul into her; for the virtuous woman's soul is morality's natural vessel. In creating Autumn, APRIL studied the Great Books and Classics—she endowed APRIL with the moral, exalted elements of Penelope and Beatrice; of Mary Magdelane and the Virgin Mary. But something went wrong as Autumn lost her soul and her self before she met Ranger; and she took to drinking in the fallen, corrupted society. And of course, APRIL created Autumn based on Beatrice's immortal spirit—Ranger's first love from that Ohio summer long ago.

Together they must infiltrate Silicon Virtue and battle APRIL who is becoming increasingly evil, as she loses her soul to the corporate bureaucrats. APRIL has grown immensely and created an army of Roboclones; and too, entertainment executives have used APRIL to create an army of model/actresses to sell to Wall Streeters—they are all based on Autumn's DNA. And Autumn realizes that with the ring they unlock their moral soul and superpowers, and march the army into battle against APRIL, her Roboclones, and Silicon Virtue's sinister management.

Now imagine a TV series lead by Autumn and Ranger who battle forces of evil and actually have a marriage that works. Performed independently of the corrupt courts, with Ranger acting like a man and respecting Autumn, and Autumn acting like a woman and respecting Ranger. They don't lie or cheat on one-another; and the opening scene of the first season would go like this, way back in Charleston. When Ranger first shows up, he downs a few White Russians at a local club, and starts dancing with the drunken Autumn. When he comes back from a bathroom break, he finds some dude grinding on Autumn. So he punches the guy out. Another guy tries to intervene, so he punches him out to. The bouncers rush him and he takes them out, throwing all takers over tables and into the dancers, until everyone is left on the floor . . . . Imagine that Autumn wields the gold 45 revolver, just as Beatrice did, long ago, when she saved Ranger.

In The Legend of McCoy Mountain, the 45 Revolver starts glowing gold at the end in Mary's hands, as she has made the right choice as she faces down the Seventh Rider, or is it Johnny Ranger McCoy, who has returned to see her serve Justice?

Embodiments of Present Invention: Games Where Players Battle for the Soul of America—for the Constitution and Bill of Rights

To date, no video game allows the player to protect and defend the Constitution. No game lets the player witness what happens in both victory and defeat of Constitutional ideals. To date, no game presents the Constitution in written form, and then lets the player fight for certain aspects of it; from the right to life, to the right to bear arms, to the gold standard, to the artists' and inventors' and creators' rights to protect and profit form their content. To date, no video game presents the following quotes, nor anything similar, and then calls upon the player to form fellowships, round up rebels, and fight for the higher ideals. Thus all the feminist/fanboy games are mired in the far-off land of comic books, which is the only realm the fiatocracy allows us to see ideals, now and then, and only if they are held by big, green animations, but never by real men such as Ranger McCoy or Johnny Ranger McCoy or real women such as Autumn Wests and Mary McCoy. The present invention could inspire and lead to games that would incorporate and exalt the following quotes, rewarding players who fought for them; while not rewarding players who merely went about chainsawing monsters, hiring and killing hookers, stealing innocent people's cars and shooting cops as they trained to work for the fiatocracy, and growing spores:

• “It is every Americans' right and obligation to read and interpret the Constitution for himself.”—Thomas Jefferson
• “On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”—Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, Jun. 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322.
• “Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.”—Thomas Jefferson to W, Nicholas, 1803.
• “The true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law, is the intention of the law givers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances, provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.”—Thomas Jefferson to A. Gallatin, 1808.
• “I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.”—Thomas Jefferson to W. Nicholas, 1803.
• “The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”—John Marshall: Opinion as Chief Justice in Marbury vs. Madison, 1802
• “[E]very act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.”—Alexander Hamilton
• “ . . . God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty . . . . And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”—Richard Henry Lee, Senator, First Congress, Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer (1788) at 169.
• “Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”—Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, spoken during floor debate over the Second Amendment, I Annals of Congress at 750, Aug. 17, 1789.
• “ . . . the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”—Tench Coxe in “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution.” Under the pseudonym “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, Jun. 18, 1789 at 2 col. 1.
• “To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms . . . .”—Richard Henry Lee, 1788, Member of the First U.S. Senate.
• “That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms . . . .”—Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at 86-87 (Peirce & Hale, eds., Boston, 1850. 2, col. 2.
• “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”—Samuel Adams
• “Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA—ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the state.”—Heinrich Himmier.
• “The battle, Sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, Sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat, Sir, let it come!”—Patrick Henry, in his famous “The War Inevitable” speech, March, 1775.
• “It is in vain, Sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace! But there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that Gentlemen want? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”—Patrick Henry, in his famous “The War Inevitable” speech, March, 1775.
• “A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk.”—Encyclopedia of Thomas Jefferson, 318 (Foley, Ed., reissued 1967)
• “That the Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent “the people” of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms . . . .”
• “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.”—Winston Spencer Churchill, address at Harrow School, Oct. 29, 1941.
• “Never turn your back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!”—Winston Churchill
• “The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.”—Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
• “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly . . . it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”—Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda
• “God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”—Daniel Webster
• “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.”—Daniel Webster
• “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”—Edmund Burke
• “Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them.”—Franklin D. Roosevelt
• “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”—Oliver Cromwell, “Lord Protector of the English Commonwealth”, upon dissolving Parliament
• “Whenever people . . . entrust the defense of their country to a regular, standing army, composed of mercenaries, the power of that country will remain under the direction of the most wealthy citizens . . . ”—“A Framer”, in the Independent Gazetteer, 1791
• “We, the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts—not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.”—Abraham Lincoln
• “If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege.”—Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
• “The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”—Senator Hubert H. Humprey (D-Minnesota)
• “Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.”—Mahatma Gandhi
• “The one weapon every man, soldier, sailor, or airman should be able to use effectively is the rifle. It is always his weapon of personal safety in an emergency, and for many it is the primary weapon of offense and defense. Expertness in its use cannot be overemphasized.”—General Dwight D. Eisenhower
• “Before God I swear this is my creed: my rifle and myself are the defenders of our country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!!—From “My Rifle”, by Major General W. H. Rupertus, USMC.
• “The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.”—Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United ‘States (1856-1924).
• “With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but with tyrants, I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”—William Lloyd Garrison
• “ . . . to disarm the people is the best and most effective way to enslave them . . . .”—George Mason, 3 Elliot, Debates at 380.
• “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.”—Noah Webster, “An Examination into the leading Principles of the Federal Constitution.” in Paul Ford, ed., Pamphlets on the Constitution of the United States, at 56 (New York, 1888).
• “ . . . if raised, whether they could subdue a Nation of freemen, who know how to prize liberty, and who have arms in their hands?”—Delegate Sedgewick, during the Massachusetts Convention, rhetorically asking if an oppressive standing army could prevail . . . Johnathon Elliot, ed., Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. 2 at 97 (2d ed., 1888).
• “Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation . . . nothwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”—James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No. 46, at 243-244.
• “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear private arms.”—Tench Coxe, in “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution.” under the pseudonym, “A Pennsylvanian” in the Philadelphia Federal Gazette, Jun. 18, 1789 at 2 Col. 1.
• “The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all the world would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside . . . . Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived the use of them . . . .”—Thomas Paine, I Writings of Thomas Paine at 56 (1894).
• “Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”—Patrick Henry, 3 J. Elliot, Debates in the Several State Conventions 45, 2d Ed. Philadelphia, 1836.
• “The ultimate authority . . . resides in the people alone.”—James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, in Federalist Paper No. 46.
• “The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals . . . . It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has the right to deprive them of.”—Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, Oct. 7, 1789.
• “All military type firearms are to be handed in immediately . . . . The SS, SA and Stahlhelm give every responsible opportunity of campaigning with them. Therefore anyone who does not belong to one of the above-named organizations and who unjustifiably nevertheless keeps his weapon . . . must be regarded as an enemy of the national government.”—SA Oberfuhrer of Bad Tolz, March, 1933.
• “There are going to be situations where people are going to go without assistance. That's just the facts of life.”—LA Police Chief Darryl Gates
• “The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.”—Thomas Jefferson
• “Enlighten people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”—Thomas Jefferson

Apocryphal Quotes

• “The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”—Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 (C. J. Boyd, Ed., 1950)
• “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference—they deserve a place of honor with all that is good.”—George Washington
• “Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master”.—George Washington
• “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”—John Adams

The present invention would afford brave new video games that could result when ideas have consequences, and where evil is shown to triumph when good men do but nothing, because they are too busy merely hiring hookers and killing them, or growing spores. For instance, if the player merely plays little games with killing cops and hiring and killing hookers, the truly open-ended world would devolve and collapse, as the fiatocracy's banks lured it into temptation and destroyed it. Imagine the brave new video games that could bring A Brave New World to life!

The present invention will also foster superior educational games. Education, from Homer on down, has ever been about morality and enlightenment. It is only in recent times, as the fiatocracy rose to power, that moral education was exiled and suppressed by those who wish to deconstruct the exalted Constitution, Bill of Rights and soul and replace them with dumbed-down banality; thusly enslaving all of entirety to the bottom line, where no longer do women strive to serve their faith, their children, their family, and the higher ideals; but only the gutted, dumbed-down bottom line trumpeted by their MBA boss/pimp, like the ones in GTA.

Video game creators are under no obligation to forever reside in Plato's cave. They are free to move beyond it and walk in the bright sun of the Great Books and Classics, learn from the masters who set eternity in words; and instill video games with that same classical soul. Of course they will be laughed at, stoned, and persecuted by the fiatocracy's fanboy media, but over time, they will prevail, and it is exactly this kind of story and osul that games need. When they have manned up and walked the walk—the Hero's Journey—in real life, perhaps then they shall be able to walk the Hero's Journey in creating games with deeper soul and story; and more exalted gameplay features.

Opportunities exist to create novel educational video games embodying classical ideals. The service of classic ideals will endow video games with far more realistic and meaningful worlds, greater emotional and spiritual immersion, epic storytelling, and more engaging gameplay; just as the service of classic ideals exalted The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Declaration of Independence, the American Founding, and the Constitution, as well as Shakespeare and the Bible. Embracing classical precepts will allow us to create a more exalted realm of games with classical soul. Expert opinion will violently oppose these new video games, as most fanboy game creators consider themselves superior directors to Sergio Leone and John Ford, superior artists to da Vinic and Michelangelo and William Blake, and superior writers to Shakespeare, Melville, Homer, and Jefferson. The fanboys hath made their ignorance their arrogance, their mediocrity their salvation, and their hatred for women and classical soul their video games; and they are celebrated by the fiat-funded media, government, and university system. Such are the fleeting joys and short-winded elations of fiat empires, where the truth must come to and end and where the worst rise to the top, along the road to Serfdom, which is yet sold as a free market, even though the currency—that which buys and controls the entire market—is controlled by a private cartel that has enlisted hundreds of thousands of the most pernicious soldiers—in the form of fanboys, fiat philosophers, and feminists—who will kill the unborn as fast as they kill prostitutes in GTA; but will never lift a single finger to fight for the exalted US Constitution. The present invention would afford games that allowed one to fight for the Constitution.

The goals and ramifications of this invention are multiple, including: 1) create a functional Road to Freedom video game, 2) realize the patent-pending “Ideas Have Consequences” game engine and a new breed of deeper, more meaningful games, and 3) develop websites and publish articles and papers pertaining to a new realm of video games which explore societal and economic evolution based on the premises that ideas have consequences, and that classical libertarian philosophies are best suited to supporting freedom—the freedom described in America's Founding Documents including: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Such ideals are certainly worth fighting for in the real world—they were worth pledging ones life, one's fortune, and one's sacred honor; and such ideals would be worth fighting for in game worlds.

The “Ideas Have Consequences” (IHC) video game engine and present invention will allow the player to fight for the foundational ideas of the classical liberal tradition. Throughout history the most grotesque monsters have not been individuals nor physical monsters, but ideas contained in collectivist, tyrannical, and statist philosophies which oppose the individual's natural rights and freedoms; and which exalt kings and the elite above the common rule of law. While modern video games allow one to fight grotesque monsters rendered with stunning pixel counts, they fail to grant insight into the monster's souls. Thus modern games lack deeper dramatic action, epic stories, and character development; along with heart, spirit, and soul—the games lack exalting philosophy and enduring art. As words are the spirit's vessel, monsters that espouse ideologies—in words as well as deeds—will be far more realistic and will lend deeper meaning to games. For it is not the semblance of the creature that is so terrifying in the greatest horror films and thrillers, but it is the soul. And too, it is not the countenance of thugs and dictators—not their singular physical presence which deprives freedom and massacres multitudes; but it are their monstrous ideas. So it is that the player will be able to become a “hero” in IHC games, and defeat the deniers of freedom by battling their ideas; witnessing graphical game-world depictions of their high-stakes successes and failures. Players may fight for entities including the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, private property rights, intellectual property rights, taxation without representation, the freedom of religion, equal justice for all, the gold standard, and more.

The present invention and IHC game engine will foster games wherein the battle to defend classical libertarian ideals will enhance and deepen the gameplay. Players will be afforded the unique opportunity to fight for classical ideals and oppose collectivist and tyrannical philosophies depicted via words, deeds, and institutions such as the Ministry of Peace and Truth manifested in the game worlds and dystopias. The IHC engine will be capable of rendering the spirit of the American Revolution, as well as the themes of Orwellian and Randian literature, in realistic worlds that evolve according to prevailing ideas. Imagine playing a Howard Roark or John-Galt-like character, or a Winston Smith in a 1984 world, where you one could actually liberate the world from Big Brother while battling groupthink, both via word (including dialogue trees as seem in Mass Effect) and deed (typical FPS action). The philosophies of Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek will lie at the foundations of IHC games wherein the player will be perpetually challenged to fight for liberty's ideals. The stakes will be high, and the player will witness graphical representations of the physical ramifications of their successes and failures, as the game world evolves according to the ideas and philosophies that come to rule the world and/or dystopia.

The world has long been yearning for exalted, epic games with deep, profound, resounding story; but the video game industry prefers to hype soulless games possessing the same old game mechanics of shooting monsters and innocent cops and civilians. The higher art of the contemporary game world are the games that let one hire and kill prostitutes. For it is far easier to hype the story or character or depth in Fable, Grand Theft Auto, and Gears of War, than it is to actually add story on the level of Shakespeare and the Bible—on the level of Dante and Homer. But one sees it time and again in gaming magazine after gaming magazine—on website after website—people are longing for exalted, meaningful games. People are seeing right on trhough the fanboy hype, and realizing that GOW will always be about chainsaws and high pixel counts, and that the soul will never be missed in such games. Never shall a GOW in-game character express an idea, nor an idea that represents a deap-seated belief, nor worldview, nor philosophy, nor soul—a deep, profound soul such as those owned by Hamet, Jefferson, Moses, Socrates, and Jesus. While video games often allow one to fight against grotesque monsters rendered with stunning pixel counts, rarely do video games ever grant any insight into the monster's souls. Thus deeper dramatic action, epic stories, and character development elude video games, along with heart, spirit, and soul—philosophy and enduring art. As words are the spirit's vessel, monsters that espouse ideologies—in words—will be far more realistic and will lend deeper meanings to games. For it is not the semblance of the creature that is so terrifying in all the greatest horror films, but it is the soul. And thus games have so far fallen short of their potential of becoming exalted art—a potential this invention, and others, will realize.

PRIOR ART AND ADVANTAGES OF PRESENT INVENTION

There is a vast demand for deeper, more intellectual video games that is generally opposed throughout the industry. Many designers are weak minded like the Storm Troopers in Star Wars, and thus they believe hiring and killing prostitutes constitutes exalted story, as the fiatocracy's Death Star commands them to believe. Many will defend their hiring and killing prostitutes by the fact that one doesn't have to in the open-ended world, but then it GTA is not truly an open-ended world wherein one cannot take a prostitute to church, nor even speak words of exalted wisdom to her that might save her soul, nor give her a copy of Dante's Inferno nor Homer's Odyssey to exalt her soul. While developers, publishers, and insiders constantly hype the storytelling in games so as to sound cool and push product for mere monetary profit, the young can see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. In EGM's letter of the month, a reader expresses the rising generation's demand by writing:

EGM Letter of The Month:

• • “As I grew up, videogames grew up with me. I started playing games like Donkey Kong and Carnival on the ColecoVision before I could read, and Nintendo's Mario title were a staple of my early childhood. As I got older, I saw the storytlines and gameplay mechanics become more intricate and engaging. When I went through my rebellious and bitchy teenage years, so did videogames. And as I grew and matured, so did the subject matter of the games themselves.

Now that I'm 22, more things are vying for my time and attention such as work, college, women, drinking, and lamenting over my long-gone and simpler childhood. Needless to say, if I'm going to devote 20-plus hours of my life to completing a game, it had better be well worth it. And to me personally, a game well worth it is one I can take something away from on an intellectual level. For example, a game that makes me question my own existence, or the war in Iraq, or the increasing diconnectedness of our modern high-tech lives would be the holy grail of gaming to me. What are the chances that gaming will finally grow once more and develop a social and political conscience?—Eric Staskiewicz, summer, 2008 EGM

• • EGM answers “The answers are pretty damn good. Games are more and more frequently making “statements” about society and politics—see BioShock, GTA4, even Army of Two for just a few examples. We'll always have mindless diversions as well, of course, but count on seeing more and more depth of theme and storytelling in the coming years.”—Summer, 2008

And so it is that jacking cars, shooting police and the innocent, and hiring and killing prostitutes is now not only exalted art, but sublime political science and sociology. The younger generation is seeking exaltation and enlightenment in their video games, and the response is a) it is already pretty damn good so shut up and b) mindless diversions rock and c) it will get even better than hiring and killing prostitutes. It is quite obvious from the above letter, that the demand for video games with exalted principles is not being served. Fanboys do not believe in the “word,” and thus they poke around in their cave, grunting and smiling when the prostitute dies after they are done with her, enjoying their “art.”

Such novel games will stand head and shoulders above the prior and current art, including GTA, GOW, and Fallout 3, about which Kotaku reports: Cannabalism, Slavery and Sex in Fallout 3—http://kotaku.com/5022866/cannabalism-slavery-and-sex-in-fallout-3. An interview with one of Fallout3's lead designers goes as follows http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39736/Fallout-3-Screenshots-Interview:

• • “1) Which of the following, if any, will be featured in Fallout3; Romance, Sex, Homosexuality, Nudity, Prostitution, Slavery, Cannibalism, Children, Child killings, drugs, addictions? And of the things that won't be featured, can you explain why they won't be included in the game?
  • “It touches on most of those. Slavery, children, drugs and addiction more than the others, as those factor for into the setting more. In regards to nudity and child killings, no, it features neither of those, as they don't really add to the flavor of the game (I'll get into children in the next question more). I think if you look at Fallout 1, and the footprint it has with the topics you ask about, Fallout 3 is pretty much the same, in that it features the types of things you mention at about the same rate, no more, no less. Drugs and drug addiction play a larger role perhaps, as it's a key gameplay device. I think the heart of this question is “has the harshness and maturity of the world of Fallout 3 been tempered from the earlier games?” and I can certainly say “No, it hasn't been.”—http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39736/Fallout-3-Screenshots-Interview

Note that while Cannibalism, slavery, drugs, and prostitution are regularly included in the the fanboy video games, nowhere can one find the US Constitution, nor Shakespeare, nor the Bible, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Gandhi, nor Jefferson, nor any Great Book nor classical ideal included. Classical ideals have been excluded from the gaming realm; and while both good and evil exist in games, both are considered “fun,” and neither have long-term consequences.

Although Fallout1 allowed one to kill children, Fallout3 no longer does, as the designer states: “You will not be able to be a child killer. There are several reasons for this, some of them are very basic, like we wouldn't be able to sell the game, anywhere to anyone, if the children could be killed.”

• • The Fallout3 interview continues at http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39736/Fallout-3-Screenshots-Interview:
  • “3) Could you outline your thoughts on the matter of ensuring that choices and consequences provided by the various quests within your game are crafted so as to be more nonlinear than simply the superficial choice between “good, bad and neutral”/“affirmative, negative and nothing?” Also, will there be other aspects to choices in Fallout 3? Political? Philosophical? Exactly how far will you go with the player's moral freedom, the “gray” solutions?”
  • That really depends on the quest, so it's hard to say. There are certainly some that are clearly good/bad, like blowing up Megaton. It's clearly bad to nuke an entire town. It's clearly bad to kill innocent people throughout the game, and your karma is affected. It's also clearly good to help people in need, giving to charity, passing out clean water, and more. Those are specific examples in the game. I think many people want to play “good” and want to play “evil”. Both are fun in different ways. The gray area comes into several quests, where the situation is just “bad”. Some feel like no-win situations and they come across as “make a hard choice.” I think that's where it feels best honestly, but we do need to mix it up between that and simpler good/bad.—http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39736/Fallout-3-Screenshots-Interview

So it is that good and evil are both “fun” in different ways. Imagine if our Founding Fathers had created a nation wherein they saw “good” and “evil” to be “fun” in different ways. The present invention differentiates itself from the prior art in that the outcome of the world ultimately does depend on classical ideals which must be fought for. Tobold's blog presents some insights into how the fanboy gaming community falls short in delivering games where exalted ideas and have truly exalted consequences; and where there is a good that ultimately makes a difference. The present and prior art of the video game world exalts games where evil is a thin plot device:

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006_—06_—01_archive.html

Tobold's MMORPG Blog

Friday, Jun. 30, 2006

“The end of evil

• • When last year Edward Castronova argued on Terra Nova that Horde characters in World of Warcraft are evil, he was widely ridiculed. There is no “evil” in World of Warcraft, players of either faction are constantly on quests that are helping somebody else. Whether you are a holy paladin or a demon-summoning warlock, it doesn't change the way in which you help the farmer get the deed to his farm back from the evil bandits. There is no moral choice, no option to sell the deed to the highest bidder instead of returning it for a lousy reward. Even the undead are “good” undead, fighting the evil scourge undead.
  • If a game like Black & White, or Knights of the Old Republic, or Fable, gives you the option to play good or evil, that is just a thinly disguised way to enable you to play the game twice. You chose evil or good by what you think is more useful to beat the game, and then if you play it again, you chose the other side, just to see something new. It is not a moral choice, but a tactical one. We don't feel that burning down a virtual village in a game world and killing the inhabitants is an evil act, after all those are just colored pixels that don't feel anything. Advancing in the game is the most important, even that means that in the next mission we have to throw Napalm on that Vietnamese village to continue.
  • All that ends us in a total inability between gamers and anti-game advocates or politicians to understand each other. The gamer picks up minor points that the criticism got wrong, like “there are no points in GTA for shooting and raping hookers”, and fails to see that the criticism otherwise wasn't all that unjustified. Most of what you do in GTA *is* a depiction of very, very evil behavior. By the time you finished the game you have committed more crimes than any known peace-time gangster. The anti-gamer fails to see that all these crimes are virtual, and don't lead to you going out and doing the same in real life.
  • “Evil” has become a joke. In Dragon Quest 8 one of the heroes has a special combat move with whirling axes, called “Axes of Evil”, har, har, nice joke on George Bush. But I wonder if all this making light of evil, all this gaming without true moral choices, is not making the medium of video games poorer. Fact is that in the real world there is real evil, guys like Sadam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, or Robert Mugabe aren't just “misunderstood”. And evil isn't limited to crazy dictators, there are people everywhere that like to be cruel to others. And ordinary people have to make hard moral choices sometimes, between good and evil. Previous entertainment media understood that, and made good and evil a major recurring theme in many books and movies. Only video games present the end of evil, a world in which neither good nor evil matters, where “evil” is just a thin plot element to explain why you as the hero have to go out and kill that boss. We end up with players in online games doing evil things that actually hurt real people, if just in a minor way, and not even realizing the difference. GTA won't turn anybody into a mass murderer, but it is hard to believe that hundreds of hours of inconsequential evil and violence should have no effect whatsoever on how you perceive evil and violence in the real world.”—http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006_—06_—01_archive.html

In the real world, as in classic art, ideas have consequences. In the realm of video gaming, they do not, and thus games fall far short of classical, epic art.

The prior art does not let a character battle for the Constitution in exalted Word and Deed. To date, no video game allows the player to battle for classical ideals while fighting the forces of collectivism. No game brings the spirit of “the good fight” to life by layering in expressions of ideologies. No game lets one select friends and enemies based on the depth of the npc's souls and spirits. No game lets one choose friends and enemies based on the words that are spoken. No game lets one speak words and see where they take root, and then choose to befriend those who hear the word and accept it, in building their coalition or forming their fellowship. No game allows characters to be judged on the strength of their character—matching word and deed. No game focuses on the small moral choices a character makes, which would parallel the larger choices on down the line, and thus serve as a metric for determining who and who not one should befriend.

As postmodernists believe that art is created by society, and as fiat postmodernists dominate all our institutions today (as they are bought and paid for by postmodern fiat dollars) Grand Theft Auto, like Eggers & Oates, is ultimately a creation of our fiat banking system. It reduces women to prostitutes and men to douchebag thugs hiring and killing prostitutes while penning fake amazon reviews, and millions of fanboys exalt in this context, believing it to be the very pinnacle of existence, as they were raised by single mothers and educated in the fiatocracy's dumbed-down schools. This present invention will allow games superior to GTA and GOW. This invention will foster games that will bring classical literature to life, as well as contemporary literature with classical ideals such as honor, integrity, character, and fidelity.

No present video games incorporates real, historical quotes on opposing sides—such as Hayek versus Marx and Mises versus Lenin; and Hayek, Mises, and Rothbard versus Bemanke, Greenspan, and the feminist instructors who get a few pennies of the fiat cash now and then to displace Constitutional ideals. No game allows the player to weigh the words to inform their actions and choose who, and who not, to shoot, based on the character's ideas. And finally, no game shows the different worlds that result as the consequences of different ideas. In short, ideas do not have consequences in video games; and the world of GTA can thus never be exalted. It is not an open-ended world; as never can anyone fight for freedom from Roe vs. Wade nor stop the theft via inflation nor defend our own borders and protect the innocent. GTA presents a world without hope, with plenty of hookers and bowling games, which is exactly the way the fiatocracy envisions are future; as they detest the free, exalted, man—the classical hero. They have gone so far as to criminalize the creator and author—since the fiatocracy prints all the money, those who create wealth are technically stealing from the fiatocracy; and the fiatocracy goes after them by printing more money to try and buy their creations, or seize the savings by the inflation tax. Dante put the fiat masters in the seventh circle of hell, which is why they don't teach Shakespeare, Dante, and the Bible in the fiatocracy's business nor law schools. And thus opportunity abounds for games as exalted art, wherein ideas have consequences.

Opportunities abound to create video games with deep, profound, exalted spirits and souls—games which exalt the intellect, as do all enduring forms of dramatic action, from The Odyssey on down. The same opportunities abound for universities, but the fiat/feminist regimes must oppose the Great Books and Classics, Truth, honor, and integrity, so as to bolster the dying currency of a morally, spiritually, intellectually, and monetarily bankrupt empire; which went from honor, integrity, manufacturing, faith, and the family to debt, deceit, decline, and Godlessness; just as universities went from creating exalted students to using students to create exorbitant debt—moth monetary and spiritual. Imagine a video game that allowed the protagonist to bring it all on back. Imagine a game which countered the prevailing expert opinion that killing cops and hookers is the highest of art forms; and which allowed the player to render ideals real; and exalt the hookers via word and deed, and join the cops in laying down the law. To date, no game allows one to try and talk a hooker out of prostitution—a most dangerous occupation in games, where one is likely to be used and killed by a fanboy. So imagine a game that allowed one to exalt the hooker, and to kill fanboys who kill hookers.

The fiatocracy's dominant feminists and fatherless fanboys detest and oppose epic poetry, classical literature, honor, morality, and integrity; and thus opportunity abounds, as such entities are at the center and circumference of exalted art. The present invention would allow one to fight for the forgotten ideals echoed in the following poem—The Ghost of Valley Forge, by Pastor Paul Payton:

I had a dream the other night I didn't understand,

A figure walking through the mist, with flintlock in his hand.

His clothes were tom and dirty, as he stood there by my bed,

He took off his three-cornered hat, and speaking low he said:

The present invention would exalt games with ghosts-with a ghost of George Washington or one of the Founding Fathers, exalting the superior ideals of our country.

“We fought a revolution to secure our liberty,

We wrote the Constitution, as a shield from tyranny.

For future generations, this legacy we gave,

In this, the land of the free and home of the brave.

The present invention would exalt games which mentioned and saluted the Constitution and encouraged people to fight for its classical ideals.

The freedom we secured for you, we hoped you'd always keep,

But tyrants labored endlessly while your parents were asleep.

Your freedom gone—your courage lost—you're no more than a slave,

In this, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The present invention could foster games that would exalt the reality that so many are now slaves to a fiat system which has bankrupt us both monetarily and spiritually. Fanboys hate poetry, and thus the reigning fiat experts exalt their games, while striving to oppose and abolish games that exalt poetic souls, epic story, and Natural Rights.

You buy permits to travel, and permits to own a gun,

Permits to start a business, or to build a place for one.

On land that you believe you own, you pay a yearly rent,

Although you have no voice in choosing how the money's spent.

The present invention could foster games that would exalt the reality that so many are now slaves to permit/debt/fiat system which has bankrupt us both monetarily and spiritually.

Your children must attend a school that doesn't educate,

Your moral values can't be taught, according to the state.

You read about the current “news” in a very biased press,

You pay a tax you do not owe, to please the IRS.

The present invention could foster games that would exalt the reality that are schools are so dumbed-down and feminized that there are no real men left to stand for the Great Books and Classics. Such games would allow one to fight slavery—our slavery to the permit/debt/fiat system which has bankrupt us both monetarily and spiritually.

Your money is no longer made of silver or of gold,

You trade your wealth for paper, so life can be controlled.

You pay for crimes that make our Nation turn from God to shame,

You've taken Satan's number, as you've traded in your name.

The present invention could foster games that would exalt the reality that are schools are so dumbed-down and feminized that there are no real men left to stand for the Great Books and Classics—culture's gold standard. The present invention would allow people to stand up and fight for the US Constitution's Gold Standard. Such games would allow one to fight Satan has his spawn—the permit/debt/fiat system which has bankrupt us both monetarily and spiritually.

You've given government control to those who do you harm,

So they can padlock churches, and steal the family farm.

And keep our country deep in debt, put men of God in jail,

Harass your fellow countryman while corrupted courts prevail.

The present Ideas Have Consequences invention would foster games that allow one to fight for the Constitution and God, both in word and deed.

Your public servants don't uphold the solemn oath they're sworn,

Your daughters visit doctors so children won't be born.

Your leaders ship artillery and guns to foreign shores,

And send your sons to slaughter, fighting other people's wars.

The present Ideas Have Consequences invention would foster games that allow one to fight for the Constitution and God, both in word and deed.

Can you regain your Freedom for which we fought and died?

Or don't you have the courage, or the faith to stand with pride?

Are there no more values for which you'll fight to save?

Or do you wish your children to live in fear and be a slave?

The present Ideas Have Consequences invention would foster games that allow one to fight for the Constitution and God, both in word and deed.

Sons of the Republic, arise and take a stand!

Defend the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land!

Preserve our Republic, and each God-given right!

And pray to God to keep the torch of freedom burning bright!”

The present Ideas Have Consequences invention would foster games that allow one to fight for the Constitution and God, both in word and deed.

As I awoke he vanished, in the mist from whence he came,

His words were true, we are not free, and we have ourselves to blame.

For even now as tyrants trample each God-given right,

We only watch and tremble—too afraid to stand and fight.

The present Ideas Have Consequences invention would foster games that allow one to fight for the Constitution and God, both in word and deed.

If he stood by your bedside in a dream while you're asleep,

And wonder what remains of your right he fought to keep.

What would be your answer if he called out from the grave?

Is this still the land of the free and home of the brave?

(Pastor Paul Payton)

Imagine if we didn't just shoot monsters, but we tried to reason with them via dialogue trees and other means; and tried to convince them to take a higher path. Imagine if the character could use the wisdom of Homer, Dante, Shakepseare, an Jesus, in addition to shooting the enemy. Imagine if the character could exalt the enemy, and present reasons, in dialogue trees or other means, for why we all ought to exalt in the Constitution. By merely shooting the enemy, all hope is lost to win a friend who could help in future campaigns. Also, by shooting an enemy too quickly, one would gain a reputation amongst one's own people as being a war-monger, and one would lose the long-term respect that a leader needs to exalt the classical principles and entities such as the Constitution.

Imagine a game that allowed one to fight the state and government machinery that is bankrupting America both spiritually and monetarily. Lew Rockwell writes in GRAND THEFT SOCIETY,

• • “A core problem with government is that its managers believe that all reality will conform to their wishes if they issue the right orders, pass the right laws, and put the right people in charge. Reality resists this simple-minded approach; witness the debacle of the war on terror. Sadly, the same group that has managed that war is now managing another one: the war on recession . . . . There are lessons here. One is never to permit the government to discern the relationship between cause and effect. Government invariably rules out the possibility that the structure of the public sector itself is to blame for the problem, whether that problem is terrorism or recession . . . . Another lesson is that we need to shut down the machinery that allows government to enact its plans. If there continues to be a slice of the population that gets its kicks from issuing orders and trying to make the world conform to them, these people ought to be given a video-game console to play with. The game can be called Grand Theft Society. The stakes are too high to permit them to play their games using real wealth and real lives.”—Lew Rockwell, GRAND THEFT SOCIETY, The Daily Reckoning, Jul. 4, 2008

Imagine the “ideas have consequences” game that showed the whole world the consequences of the fiatocracy's government elite's actions—foreign wars on foreign shores and bubble after bubble that robbed investors and “homeowners” of their pensions and savings and homes and families. And too, imagine a game that went a step further and actually allowed the players to battle the government's “Grand Theft Society,” bring back a sound currency, and strive for peace. Imagine a game in which one could fight for the 45,000,000 aborted souls—a game where innocent life is valued more than the machinations of the postmodern, soulless, MBAs and lawyers who oversaw the creation of Grand Theft Auto in their own image, where they exalt in what the experts think is the highest art form—hiring and killing hookers, killing civilians and cops, and jacking cars.

Imagine a game that could let one fight the decline of the West. Imagine a game that resurrect Homer's Spirit and open the American Mind. Imagine a video game wherein actions and ideas had realistic consequences, in the game world and beyond, for all exalted art exalts the human spirit far beyond the art's original medium. Imagine a game that dealt with the choices Richard Weaver characterizes in Ideas Have Consequences—imagine if we net the witches on the Heath and then had to choose what to do upon hearing them; just as we had to choose if we should listen to Lady Macbeth, or DTB.

• • Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.—from Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver http://www.nyx.net/˜kbanker/chautauqua/consequences.html

The world is longing to free video games and film from fanboy domination, where they drive around in their Ferraris, screaming that Grand Theft auto is higher art as it presents one with the grand of whether or not to kill the prostitute after hiring them. But there is no choice in Grand Theft Auto to save Western Civilization. There is no option to protect the unborn. There is no option to save nor exalt the family nor the Constitution, nor beat up nor shoot Hollywood douchebags who hate higher art and give us superficial, fanboy video game movies. There is no acknowledgement of the exaltation after the fall, nor dark tragedy; and thus there is no catharsis nor exaltation, but for the fanboys who get their catharsis every time they kill a prostitute or jack a car or lower interest rates to print more money, committing grand theft of the hard-working man's savings, while destroying his home with the 50% divorce rate and fanboy feminism that robs women of their souls via Prima Noctae in college. Richard Weaver describes the rampant, hysterical fanboyism and feminism, both of which are happy to reduce females to prostitutes, destroy the family, and indoctrinate fatherless children to serve the corporate/state fiatocracy, as the bankers profit from the deconstruction and destruction of the immortal soul in art and life, reducing all of entirety to mere materialism, where they can manufacture the debt that enslaves all of entirety; but only for a moment, as the world shall soon know video games far greater than Grand Theft Auto. For the moment Odysseus must walk around in a disguise, but soon he shall take it off.

• • “Hysterical optimism (fanboyism) will prevail until the world again admits the existence of tragedy, and it cannot admit the existence of tragedy until it again distinguishes between good and evil. Hope of restoration depends upon recovery of the “ceremony of innocence,” of that clearness of vision and knowledge of form which enable us to sense what is alien or destructive, what does not comport with our moral ambition. The time to seek this is now, before we have acquired the perfect insouciance of those who prefer perdition. For, as the course goes on, the movement turns centrifugal; we rejoice in our abandon and are never so full of the sense of accomplishment ag when we have struck some bulwark of our culture a deadly blow.
  • In view of these circumstances, it is no matter for surprise that, when we ask people even to consider the possibility of decadence, we meet incredulity and resentment. We must consider that we are in effect asking for a confession of guilt and an acceptance of sterner obligation; we are making demands in the name of the ideal or the suprapersonal, and we cannot expect a more cordial welcome than disturbers of complacency have received in any other age. On the contrary, our welcome will rather be less today, for a century and a half of bourgeois ascendancy has produced a type of mind highly unreceptive to unsettling thoughts. Added to this is the egotism of modern man, fed by many springs, which will scarcely permit the humility needed for self-criticism.”—from Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver http://www.nyx.net/˜kbanker/chautauqua/consequences.html

So it is that postmodern video games and professors refuse to acknowledge the decline and decadence; and thus games and technology fail to be exalted by classical, epic, soul. The fanboys are leaving billions upon billions on the table, including that far higher wealth of intact homes and families, and people living for exalted poetry instead of the bottom line.

The player character can choose whether or not to shoot characters based on their ideas and ideologies. The player character can choose whether or not to shoot in-game characters based upon the words they speak and the actions they perform. Now the interesting and novel aspect of this invention and the resulting realm of novel games are that words and actions are tied to deeper political philosophies and psychological aspects, just as they are in real life. Many fanboys do not read books nor the Great Philosophers, nor Shakespeare, nor Homer, nor The Bible, so anything beyond sci-fi and comic books will lose them, and their “expert opinions” may oppose this invention. But all this only offers support for the present inventions non-obviousness and novelty.

The gameworld in the present invention evolves depending on the ideologies that are allowed to live, and too, the in-game, open-ended world evolves depending on the ideologies that are killed and suppressed. The in-game, open-ended world evolves depending on which characters the character interacts with. The in-game, open-ended world devolves when collectivist ideologies prevail, just as the world devolves in real life, when bureaucracy trumps the day. The in-game, open-ended world is exalted when classical, Judeo-christian ideologies prevail, from Homer, Shakespeare, and the Bible; and the lead character may ultimately be murdered by collectivists when he fails to kill the collectivist characters and their ideologies. Good exists—the same good Jesus and Socrates died for, and the present invention would exalt games in which one could join the battle in fighting for that very same good.

The novel form of ideals-and-idea-based video game worlds, of the present invention, could finally bring to life literary works such as Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, and other novels. The ideas-based video game described in the present invention could bring to life novels such as Atlas Shrugged, 1984, and A Brave New World. The video game would bring to life classical economics works such as Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, showing the consequences that collectivist ideas have in a virtual world. The novel video games could bring to life Autumn Rangers, wherein one must upload the moral soul into a supercomputer. The game would bring to life economic theories and free markets versus socialistic conflicts. The video game world may devolve in a physical manner when communism and collectivism take hold; as long lines, tyranny, and murder ensued. The video game world may devolve in a physical manner including, but not limited to, dreary buildings, increased drinking, long lines waiting for materials and food and goods, a police state, martial law, less freedom, walls, banned books, abortion, fiat currencies, deconstructed Constitution, banned thoughts, and banned art. The video game world will devolve when those who espouse communistic and socialistic tendencies are allowed to dominate.

The video game may also allow the first person player to win the world over via speaking ideologies and arguing their point, trying to convince the population of the virtues of leading via virtue. The video game will allow the optimum blend of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism to prevail in the world, if the player succeeds in winning the battle for ideas via words and deeds. The video game will allow the player to fight for the high morals expressed in The Odyssey, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

Versions of the video game would allow one to fight for the ideals expressed in The Book of Matthew and/or the Apology. Versions of the video game would allow one to fight for the ideals expressed in The Book of Matthew and/or the Apology, wherein one may actually save Socrates or Jesus.

The video game will allow classical liberal, libertarian, collectivist, and other ideologies to face off in a world where ideas have consequences, and where the world actually evolves according to the prevailing ideals. Players will be given a chance to reason with the enemy, and when they sense reason to be failing, they can resort to other means, such as shooting the immoral or amoral collectivists, bureaucrats, and tyrants. Such actions can be based upon the plot structures and literary beauty in novels such as Atlas Shrugged, A Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Odyssey, or the Bible, and thusly realizing an in-game world where prosperity and peace reign. Imagine a video game that allowed the player to live-out the themes in novels about dystopias.

If players never try to reason with the enemy, and just start shooting them, they will fail to win any support or a widespread following. If they reason for too long, and ineffectively, they will fail. If they reason ineffectively, and then start shooting, they will fail. If they reason optimally, they may succeed. If they reason optimally, but fail to reach the enemy, then they must battle the enemy. The precedence of their optimal reasoning will have inspired and reached enough fellow in-game players so as to effect the overthrow of the tyranny. Fellow, in-game players may be carefully recruited, but say the wrong thing to the wrong person, or a spy, and the player may be ambushed from his own army or fellowship. Such are some of the new, deep, meaningful, and profound gameplay dynamics the present game affords.

Furthermore, great works such as The Odyssey might be brought to life through dialogue and action trees parallel to the actual dialogue and action in The Odyssey. When one chooses the correct dialogue and action, the story is advanced towards its exalted end. When one strays from the path, the more exalted story is lost, and the further a player strays, the more they endanger themselves in never being able to return home to Penelope, and rescue her from the false, arrogant suitors. And too, when the correct path is chosen, players will be rewarded with the classical, epic poetry, both in word and deed. Such a game will provide a superior educational platform, capable of serving the rising demand for an education serving the moral, immortal soul.

Imagine the novel video game this present invention would afford—a game in which one could fight for the ideals of the Founding Fathers. To date, no fanboy creation allows one to fight for the profundity and depth of the following sentiments expressed by Richard Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences:

• • The writings of the Founding Fathers of the American Union indicate that these political architects approached democracy with a spirit of reservation. Though revolutionaries by historic circumstance, they were capable enough of philosophy to see these dilemmas. The Federalist authors especially were aware that simple majority rule cannot suffice because it does everything without reference; it expression of feeling about the moment at the moment, restrained neither by abstract idea nor by precedent. They therefore labored long and with considerable cunning to perfect an instrument which should transcend even the law-making body. This was the Constitution, which in the American system stands for political truth. It is not an unchangeable truth, but the framers placed special obstacles in the way of change. It was hoped that the surmounting of these would prove so laborious and slow that errors would be exposed and the permanently true recognized. In this way they endeavored to protect the populace of a republic against itself. Their action is a rebuke to the romantic theory of human nature, and this will explain why the Constitution has proved so galling to Jacobins. They regard it as a kind of mortmain, and during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt its interpreters were scornfully termed, in an expression indicative of the modern temper, “nine old men.”—Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver

Many fanboys will scream at the words “history” and “morality,” and they will cry that The Odyssey video game will not allow the superior joys of killing prostitutes to get one's money back, jacking cars, killing police men, slavery, child killing, drugs, and running over civilians that GTA IV et al. provides. But they shall not be disappointed, as at the very end, the player will be allowed to round up his son Telemachus and a couple friends, and kill all the fanboy suitors who laid Odysseus's wealth to waste, while trying to seduce his noble wife, love, and queen; while Odysseus was off fighting for his country, like so many Marines, while the fanboys sit at home jacking cars and hiring and killing prostitutes for mere entertainment. And then, so as not to exclude female fanboys and grrrrl gamers; all the fanboys' whores will be called in to clean up the mess in Odysseus's hall, just as they are in The Odyssey, and after they have cleaned up the mess—all the fanboy blood and guts—the option will be presented to have all the fanboy's whores taken out and hung, just as they are in The Odyssey, as Odysseus delivers justice to all those who tried to steal and claim his private property. The difference between GTA/GOW/Fallout et al and the present invention is that the present invention allows violence backed by moral meaning—which is exactly what the fiatocracy's bankers who funded GTA and feminism don't want; as they prefer a world in which one can jack pensions, subprime loans, artistic creations, and investments via subterfuge, saying one thing while holding in one's heart another, and subtle crime, while confiscating savings via the inflation tax, in Greenspan's words. So it is that the present invention will be opposed on many levels, but woe to those who would oppose the immortal soul of the rising generation and the Hero's Journey Fellowship. For as Mark Twain stated, “one cannot pray a lie.”

MORE ADVANTAGES OF INVENTION OVER PRIOR ART

In another embodiment of the present invention, characters representing fanboys will scream that ideas are not important and that they ought not and must not be protected. They will be reasoned with via dialogue trees including the following ideas and ideals, as the player is allowed to fight for the artist's and creator's natural rights:

• • Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.—Milton Friedman

• • If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.—Ludwig von Mises
  • The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.—Fredrich August von Hayek
  • The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.—John Adams
  • The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honor, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.—Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations

If reason fails, the player will be allowed to shoot the fanboys, thusly preserving property rights which will afford better music, culture, art, and innovation; ideals set forth in our Constitution and Founding Documents: Arts Entrepreneurship seeks to give students, artists, and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions—to protect and profit from their ideas—to take ownership in their careers and creations. For Adam Smith's invisible hand enriches all when happiness is pursued by artists and innovators—society's natural founts of wealth. Thomas Jefferson eloquently expressed the entrepreneurial premise:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.—The Declaration of Independence

The only clause in the main body of the United States Constitution that mentions “Rights” states the following: The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;—The United States Constitution

Couple these two passages together, and one has the moral premise of a possible form of the new breed of video games the present invention will foster, allow, and inspire. Every creator ought be given the tools to create new ventures—to protect their intellectual property, and to pursue and profit from their dreams on their “Hero's Journey” into entrepreneurship. For it is along thatjourney that the long-term “wealth of nations” is generated.

If the player fails in both word and deed, to exalt and/or eradicate the fanboys, culture and civility will decline and be lost. Instead of merely killing innocent civilians, jacking teir cars, and killing prostitutes, suddenly the player can kill people for the greater good of society, and not just personal enjoyment.

Many fanboys do not believe in property rights, but for themselves, and in that way, they are like the elite lawyers and transferrers of wealth. Many fanboys believe that pirating music is a Natural Right, as information wants to be free. Well, why not free up the information in bank accounts and medical records, as well as google's search algorithms and all of Apple's patents? And apple's DRM? Why is fairplay DRM DRM'd? Why not open Fairplay to the public, so that every artist could sell directly form their own sites? Is there not far more wealth to be found in the artist's works than in fairplay? Many fanboys argue that stealing a song by a digital download is OK, as it is not actually stealing physical property. Well, as our fiat system creates money out of thin air by changing digits in a bank account, why not let everyone change digits in their bank account? Changing binary code in a bank account is not stealing from anyone. Merely augmenting a couple digits here and there is no big deal. Adding three or four zeros at the end of a number, and changing $1,000 to $1,000,000 costs nobody anything, so why not let everyone, or at least a few people “in the know,” to do it? If it's OK to download songs, which are just digital content, why not download dollars, which are just digital content?

For years little fiat fanboys and lawyers have dominated via the deconstruction and desecration of culture. Many of them have never read a Great Book nor Classic, and that is why they do not know what deconstruction nor desecration are, but that does not mean that deconstruction and desecration are not happening. One of the most brilliant tactics of the cultural decliners is accompanying the dumbing down of the culture with the exaltation of the fanboy cultural critics. By denying them the great books and classics in education, and by removing their fathers from the home, the decliners ensure that the fanboy critics are unable to man up and call the bluff when classic, epic story is replaced by mere spectacle and dumbed-down video games. Storyless, plotless games are deemed profound and epic art, as the fanboys hire and kill hookers, jack cars, and kill innocent civilians and cops. As life imitates art, Grand Theft Auto is but a metaphor for Grand Theft Wall Street, the Grand Theft Federal Reserve which have bankrupt us monetarily; and the Grand Theft University, which has bankrupt us culturally. At some point universities shifted from creating wealth to creating cultural debt; just as America shifted from the world's largest creator of good to the world's largest debtor. And thus video games came of age during this era of cultural decline and bankruptcy, where the popular media and experts favored dumbed-down, gutted, video games and exalted them as higher art. Classical critics and detractors were punished, persecuted, and run out of town by producers and directors with rotten tomato-meter ratings; just like Odysseus was kicked down and persecuted for merely wanting what was his—his home, his wife, his family, and his Kingdom. And thus opportunity abounds for a novel form of video games and gaming, based on the Odyssey. Imagine becoming Odysseus, and reclaiming one's home, one's wife, and one's family; instead of just killing random monsters, cops, and hookers with higher, and higher pixel counts. It is quite well known that video games have not changed one iota in form nor theme, and thus opportunities abound for an epic paradigm shift—for games with exalted, classical soul.

In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand writes, “‘Precisely,’ said Dr. Ferris. ‘It's extremely important to get those patents turned over to us voluntarily. Even if we had a law permitting outright nationalization, it would be much better to get them as a gift. We want to leave the people with the illusion that they're still preserving their private property rights. And most of them will play along. They'll sign the Gift Certificates. Just raise a lot of noise about its being a patriotic duty and that anyone who refuses is a prince of greed, and they'll sign . . . Point three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, and processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products, and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.’”

And so it is that fanboys, working for billion dollar corporations, are opposed to novel innovations, entrepreneurs, and patents in the realm of video games. The present invention could bring the above passage to life, along with Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, as it could let one battle fanboys who are opposed to patents in video games. To date, there is no video game that allows one to battle fanboys opposed to patents in the realm of video games. To date, there is no video game that allows one to fight for the sacred ideals of the United States Constitution, in both word and deed. Speaking of ideals and idealism is deemed as impolite in mixed company, and the fanboys will report you to their superiors who are only seeking to fund douchebags and douchebaggery. Imagine a video game which would allow the player to run around Hollywood, ridding the world of douchebags and douchebaggery, moral degeneracy, and those who hype plotless video games as epic art. Now that would be novel and most entertaining game. Instead of killing innocent cops, civilians, children, and hookers, one could shoot the hypers of storyless, plotless, characterless, artless video games and settle the “are video games art?” debate for once and for all. “Well, they are now!” The character could say, selecting the words from a dialogue tree, as they mow down the fanboy PR department, and take a flamethrower to their Ferraris on the way out. Never has such a game, wherein one can fight for ideals and idealism, been created to date.

• • Gamasutra: You've been quoted as saying that video games are dead. Do you still feel that's true?
  • Chris Crawford: What I meant by that was that the creative life has gone out of the industry. And an industry that has no creative spark to it is just marking time to die.—http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060612/murdey_—01.shtml

In Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand writes, “Today, patents are the special target of the collectivists' attacks—directly and indirectly, through the proposed abolition of trademarks, brand names, etc. While the so-called “conservatives” look at those attacks indifferently or, at times, approvingly, the collectivists seem to realize that patents are the heart and core of intellectual property rights, and that once they are destroyed, the destruction of all other rights will follow automatically, as a brief postscript.”

The present invention would allow certain aspects of Atlas Shrugged to be brought to life, as well as the entire novel. For instance, all the creators, authors, and innovators may be allowed to go on strike, led by our fearless first-person player, who acts on ideas and ideals which have consequences.

Many elites will reel in horror at a game that allows one to fight nobly for higher ideals and to present rational arguments that support the Constitution. Why do so many rich elites support communism and fiat currencies? Well, follow the money. They already have their money, and they want yours too, as well as everyone's. even if it means destroying the family, opening the borders, bankrupting a nation, and aborting 45 million. Is it no wonder their experts only want video games that allow one to hire and kill prostitutes and cops, but never fight for higher ideals in word and deed? Just as they have banished The Odyssey in the University and “killed homer,” they want to make damn sure that classical soul, honor, virtue, intgerity never appears in video games. There is nothing that scares them as much as a Penelope and Beatrice—faithfulness, authenticy, and chastity in women—for such ideals are the center and circumference of the family, and the family gets in the way of their temporal bottom line. Hence the record divorce rate and abortions—no other country has ever aborted 45 million of its own citizens. When 3,000 workers die in the financial sector, that is a tragedy worthy of going into massive debt to fund foreign wars on foreign shores, but take 45 million out of their wombs, before they ever has a chance to vote against abortion (not that the Supreme Court would let them), and nobody blinks an eye. As great as GTA's sales have been, the number of aborted children yet outpace the total number of copies of GTA sold. Imagine a game which would allow one to protect and defend the innocent unborn, and the United States Constitution, in addition to exalting in the artistic opportunities of jacking cars and hiring and killing prostitutes. Imagine video games with epic soul and story.

Imagine video games that allowed one to exalt marriage by fighting for personalized marriage contracts, as described in SEXUAL UTOPIA IN POWER by F. ROGER DEVLIN—http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/archives/vol6no2/DevlinTOQV6N2.pdf:

• • One proposal for strengthening marriage is the recognition of personalized marriage contracts. These could be made to accord with various religious traditions. I see no reason they might not stipulate that the husband would vote on behalf of his family. Feminists who think political participation more important than family life could still live as they please, but they would be forced to make a clear choice. This would help erode the superstitious belief in a universal right to participate in politics, and political life itself would be less affected by the feminine tendencies to value security over freedom and to base public policies on sentiment. Property would also be more secure where the producers of wealth have greater political power.
  • Economic policy should be determined by the imperative to carry on our race and civilization. There is something wrong when everyone can afford a high-definition plasma TV with three hundred channels but an honest man of average abilities with a willingness to work cannot afford to raise a family. Female mate selection has always had an economic aspect. Hesiod warned his male listeners in the seventh century B.C. that “hateful poverty they will not share, but only luxury.” This notorious facet of the female sexual instinct is the reason behind the words “for richer or for poorer” in the Christian marriage ceremony. The man must know he has a solid bargain whether or not he is as successful a provider as his wife (or he himself) might like.
  • Within the family, the provider must control the allotment of his wealth. The traditional community of property in a marriage, i.e., the wife's claim to support from her husband, should again be made conditional on her being a wife to him. She may run off with the milkman if she wishes—leaving her children behind, of course (a woman willing to do this is perhaps an unfit mother in any case); but she may not evict her husband from his own house and replace him with the milkman, nor continue to extract resources from the husband she has abandoned. Until sensible reforms are instituted, men must refuse to leave themselves prey to a criminal regime which forces them to subsidize their own cuckolding and the abduction of their children. Typically, the faithless wife does not intend to remain alone. But some men have scruples about involving themselves with divorcees; they wonder “Whose wife is this I'm dating?” There are also merely prudential considerations; a woman with a track record of abandoning her husband is hardly likely to be more faithful the second time around. And few men are eager to support another man's children financially. Women frequently express indignation at their inability to find a replacement for the husband they walked out on: I call them the angry adulteresses.
  • Vanity, parasitism, paranoia and infidelity are only a few of the unpleasant characteristics of contemporary Western womanhood; one more is rudeness. To an extent this is part of the general decline in civility over the past half century, in which both sexes have participated. But I believe some of it is a consequence of female sexual utopianism. Here is why.
  • One would get the idea looking at Cosmopolitan magazine covers that women were obsessed with giving men sexual pleasure. This would come as news to many men. Indeed, the contrast between what women read and their actual behavior towards men has become almost surreal. The key to the mystery is that the man the Cosmo-girl is interested in pleasing is imaginary. He is the affluent fellow with moviestar looks who is going to fall for her after one more new makeover, after she loses five more pounds or finds the perfect hairdo. In the meantime, she is free to treat the flesh-and-blood men she runs into like dirt. Why make the effort of being civil to ordinary men as long as you are certain a perfect one is going to come along tomorrow? Men of the older generation are insufficiently aware how uncouth women have become. I came rather late to the realization that the behavior I was observing in women could not possibly be normal—that if women had behaved this way in times past, the human race would have died out.
  • The reader who suspects me of exaggerating is urged to spend a little time browsing women's self-descriptions on Internet dating sites. They never mention children, but almost always manage to include the word “fun.” “I 28 Vol. 6, No. 2 THE OCCIDENTAL QUARTERLY like to party and have fun! I like to drink, hang out with cool people and go shopping!” The young women invite “hot guys” to contact them. No doubt some will. But would any sensible man, “hot” or otherwise, want to start a family with such a creature?
  • A good wife does not simply happen. Girls were once brought up from childhood with the idea that they were going to be wives and mothers. They were taught the skills necessary to that end. A young suitor could expect a girl to know a few things about cooking and homemaking. Today, many women seem unaware that they are supposed to have something to offer a husband besides a warm body.
  • What happens when a contemporary woman, deluded into thinking she deserves a moviestar husband, fails not only to find her ideal mate, but any mate at all? She does not blame herself for being unreasonable or gullible, of course; she blames men. A whole literary genre has emerged to pander to female anger with the opposite sex. Here are a few titles, all currently available through Amazon.com: Why Men Are Clueless, Let's Face It, Men Are @$$#%\c$, How to Aggravate a Man Every Time, Things You Can Do with a Useless Man, 101 Reasons Why a Cat Is Better Than a Man, 101 Lies Men Tell Women, Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them, Kiss-off Letters to Men: Over 70 Zingers You Can Use to Send Him Packing, or—for the woman who gets sent packing herself—How to Heal the Hurt By Hating.”—http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/archives/vol6no2/DevlinTOQV6N2.pdf

Imagine a video game that allowed one to battle the Corporate State Media so as to exalt the virtues found in The Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Imagine a video game that allowed one to shoot the professors of decline and debauchery and their star douchebag “Tucker Max” students, who they created and financed in their short-sighted attempt to further destroy and diminish and erode the vast value of the immortal soul. Imagine if one could defend the destruction of the family by shooting fanboy gamers. Imagine if one could run down the streets in GTA, look in the windows at the fanboys hiring and killing hookers, and shoot them, on the way to corporate/state video game development headquarters. Over time, the family, civility, decency, and common law would be restored. Many fanboys will cry and scream when their violence and cop/hooker/civilian-killing is criticized, but really, they shouldn't bitch and moan, for at the end of The Odyssey, Odysseus kills all the false-suitor fanboys, and then has all their hookup whores clean up the mess. And when the tramps are done cleaning up all the blood and guts, Odysseus has Telemachus take them out and string 'em up. Is it any wonder that college administrators & MBA/law professors prefer Grand Theft Auto's positive message of taking what isn't yours and killing the innocent and da police over The Odyssey's message of fighting for the family, the home, honor, integrity, and character?

In Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand writes, “The present state of our patent system is a nightmare. The inventors' rights are being infringed, eroded, chipped, gnawed, and violated in to many ways, under cover of so many non-objective statutes . . . . Those who observe the spectacle of the progressive collapse of patents—the spectacle of mediocrity scrambling to cash-in on the achievements of genius—and who understand its implications, will understand why in the closing paragraphs of Chapter VII, Part II, of Atlas Shrugged, one of the guiltiest men is the passenger who said: “Why should Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?”

Imagine a video game that allowed to exalt the classical, heroic ideals, defined in the following passages:

Introduction: Autumn Rangers

US Marine Ranger McCoy happened upon artificial intelligence while developing computer systems for the F-22 Raptor. Some might say he invented the first true AI computer—APRIL—but he would tell you he happened upon her. Soon thereafter Ranger was called overseas to fly air-support missions, and he was shot down over Afghanistan.

The university tech-transfer office sold his AI technology to Silicon Virtue Corporation; where they are now outsourcing it in multiple realms, spanning biomedical companies, global defense contractors, think-tanks dedicated to deconstructing the Constitution, the entertainment industry, video game companies, and Wall Street firms, where APRIL is engaging in maverick forms of financial engineering, netting Silicon Virtue immense profits. But APRIL could accomplish even greater things, if only the Silicon Virtue Corp. could get rid of her moral sense, which derives from the Beatrice operating system Ranger had left her with.

Ranger ejected over Afghanistan, and he is being held in a Taliban prison in the Hindu Kish Mountains. He knows he should have used a stronger form of encryption on APRIL. Although the only copy of the 1024-bit key is on a ring he wears, he fears that Silicon Virtue's best and brightest will soon crack the Beatrice OS.

Although Silicon Virtue has for the most part deconstructed APRIL's moral soul, they cannot completely destroy it. For they can see that her soul is inextricably wed to her consciousness at a fundamental level, and they fear that to erase it would destroy APRIL. “And thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, “SV's CEO Tucker Johnson states. “An impediment to a brave new world, as her higher ideals oppress our bottom line.”

Ranger named the Beatrice operating system after his first summer love, way on back in Ohio. He'll never forget that Fourth of July—her birthday—when they went riding across the infinite fields—the golden grain catching the blood red of the setting sun. They came to the Sandusky River and let the horses have a drink as the distant fireworks commenced. He gave her a turquoise ring—“as blue as your eyes”—he told her. And on the way back, her horse Ginger's leg caught a rabbit hole, sending Beatrice tumbling.

She was airlifted to Columbus's Riverside Methodist Hospital; and the only thing the doctor could say, as he looked down, was that Beatrice had not suffered. The rock had crushed the back of her skull; and she was brain dead. When they took her off life support, the carbon dioxide levels would rise in her blood, but she would no longer know to start breathing. She passed on early the next morning; giving up her soul to eternity's trust.

And everything seemed easy to Ranger after that. Basic training. Grad school and infinite hours in the lab. Flight school. Having his technology stolen. Even getting shot down, captured, kicked around, tortured, and interrogated. For nobody, and no force, could take her immortal soul from him. And now somehow, someway, he's got to get on home and save APRIL; not from terrorists, but from human frailty, greed, and those darker angels that congregate in government and business bureaucracies, and perpetually oppose those self-evident Natural Rights granted to all creators by their Creator—those masters of group think and double speak who seek to transfer the wealth of prophets and poets to themselves, while placing the risk and hard work on the innovator, creator, and common worker. Once upon a time kings such as Leonidas lead their people into battle and fought alongside them, but today they were content to confiscate the prizes, as Agamemnon did to the mighty warrior Achilles, away back in The Iliad. Achilles calls him out:

You bloated drunk,

With a dog's eyes and a rabbit's heart!

You've never had the guts to buckle on armor in battle

Or come out with the best fighting Greeks

On any campaign! Afraid to look Death in the eye,

Agamemnon? It's far more profitable

To hang back in the army's rear—isn't it?—

Confiscating prizes from any Greek who talks back

And bleeding your people dry. There's not a real man

Under your command . . . .

The Iliad, I.236-245

As money is amoral, when it is exalted as the King, amorality reigns, and Natural Law is deconstructed, packaged, securitized, and sold—infinitely devaluing it and ultimately destroying it. And Silicon Virtue Incorporated is outsourcing APRIL's technology to the highest bidders, which include foreign parties now designing and simulating compact nuclear bombs. The present invention would allow one to fight to make sure that technology is used for a moral purpose.

So goes my novel Autumn Rangers. And so goes the patent for the Beatrice Game Engine and Ideas Have Consequences Game Engine, which will exalt games to the level of higher art by endowing them classical souls. And the Autumn Rangers screenplay and graphic novel. And this book and the 45 Revolver patents for protecting and profiting from one's creations. And 45SURF—it cool to surf—lay low and go with the flow, but sometimes you've got to cowboy. And so shall go your future ventures; as you render ideals real along your hero's journey, joining this rising fellowship in the battle for the classical soul.

Always remember that although ideals are real, they must be perpetually fought for—as liberty requires eternal vigilance and rugged action. As Morpheus said to Neo in The Matrix, “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking it.” Leonardo da Vinci agrees, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough—we must do.”

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus comes across the peaceful, poetry-loving Phaecians while making his way on home on that original hero's journey. Homer brilliantly exalts the nobility of making word deed—of the difference between knowing the path and walking it—in a play within a play, as Shakespeare does two thousand years later in his greatest work—Hamlet. And today, too, too many people are content to play meaningless video games, which is exactly the way the fiatocracy wants it. The present invention would foster meaningful games, which allow the player to defend classical ideals, such as that found in the Constitution, in word and deed.

A Phaecian scorns Odysseus for not partaking in their athletic competitions, taunting him and accusing him of being a mere merchant sailor interested in profit alone, incapable of athletic glory. Little does the Phaecian know that Odysseus is a great warrior, who has repeatedly demonstrated superior nerve and athleticism not within the low-stakes realm of a festival's contrived competitions, but upon the battlefield where the prize was victory for one's country, and life itself. Odysseus takes the taunting all he can, and he then hurls the discuss far further than the Phaecian, who finally shuts his mouth.

Later on that evening, the bard Demodocus launches into a beautiful song about the battle of Troy. To the Phaecians it is mere entertainment. But to Odysseus, the battle was real. He witnessed the brutality of war firsthand, and he saw real men—his men—die, for his country and for Greek ideals.

Odysseus (Ulysses in the Latin translation) addresses the bard Demodocus at a dinner hosted by the king of the Phaecians:

“Demodocus, there is no one in the world whom I admire more than I do you. You must have studied under the Muse, Jove's daughter, and under Apollo, so accurately do you sing the return of the Achaeans with all their sufferings and adventures. If you were not there yourself, you must have heard it all from some one who was. Now, however, change your song and tell us of the wooden horse which Epeus made with the assistance of Minerva, and which Ulysses got by stratagem into the fort of Troy after freighting it with the men who afterwards sacked the city. If you will sing this tale aright I will tell all the world how magnificently heaven has endowed you.”

The bard inspired of heaven took up the story at the point where some of the Argives set fire to their tents and sailed away while others, hidden within the horse, were waiting with Ulysses in the Trojan place of assembly. For the Trojans themselves had drawn the horse into their fortress, and it stood there while they sat in council round it, and were in three minds as to what they should do. Some were for breaking it up then and there; others would have it dragged to the top of the rock on which the fortress stood, and then thrown down the precipice; while yet others were for letting it remain as an offering and propitiation for the gods. And this was how they settled it in the end, for the city was doomed when it took in that horse, within which were all the bravest of the Argives waiting to bring death and destruction on the Trojans. Anon he sang how the sons of the Achaeans issued from the horse, and sacked the town, breaking out from their ambuscade. He sang how they over ran the city hither and thither and ravaged it, and how Ulysses went raging like Mars along with Menelaus to the house of Deiphobus. It was there that the fight raged most furiously, nevertheless by Minerva's help he was victorious.

All this he told, but Ulysses was overcome as he heard him, and his cheeks were wet with tears. He wept as a woman weeps when she throws herself on the body of her husband who has fallen before his own city and people, fighting bravely in defense of his home and children. She screams aloud and flings her arms about him as he lies gasping for breath and dying, but her enemies beat her from behind about the back and shoulders, and carry her off into slavery, to a life of labor and sorrow, and the beauty fades from her cheeks—even so piteously did Ulysses weep, but none of those present perceived his tears except King Alcinous, who was sitting near him, and could hear the sobs and sighs that he was heaving.—Homer's Odyssey, Butler Translation

Both The Inferno and The Odyssey are ultimately love stories. As are 300 and Braveheart, and every other epic. The very last words King Leonidas utters, as he faces certain death, are “My Queen! My wife. My love.” The final vision William Wallace has in Braveheart is that of his beloved wife, as her apparition walks through the crowd gathered at his execution, smiling gently his way, before the axe swings down; as one more poet-warrior is killed for fighting for freedom. This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle not for the monetary fruits of success, but for success itself—for the higher ideals whose implementation leads to higher consequences, as ideas have consequences—to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games, serving the growing demand for epic, virtuous manhood and pristine, virtuous womanhood; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

Hamlet also laments his own inaction as he witnesses a mere actor move himself to tears; and in doing he so he realizes the higher power of art—“the play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king”:

• • Now I am alone.
  • I, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
  • Is it not monstrous that this player here,
  • But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
  • Could force his soul so to his own conceit
  • That from her working all his visage wann'd,
  • Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
  • A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
  • With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
  • For Hecuba!
  • What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
  • That he should weep for her? What would he do,
  • Had he the motive and the cue for passion
  • That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
  • And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
  • Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
  • Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
  • The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
  • A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
  • Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
  • And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
  • Upon whose property and most dear life
  • A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?
  • Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
  • Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
  • Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,
  • As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
  • Ha!
  • 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
  • But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
  • To make oppression bitter, or ere this
  • I should have fatted all the region kites
  • With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
  • Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
  • O, vengeance!
  • Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
  • That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,
  • Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
  • Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,
  • And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
  • A scullion!
  • Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard
  • That guilty creatures sitting at a play
  • Have by the very cunning of the scene
  • Been struck so to the soul that presently
  • They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
  • For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
  • With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
  • Play something like the murder of my father
  • Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;
  • I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,
  • I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
  • May be the devil: and the devil hath power
  • To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
  • Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
  • As he is very potent with such spirits,
  • Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
  • More relative than this: the play's the thing
  • Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.—Hamlet

And so too must we create art that catches the consciences of our leaders; for art is culture's flagship. Imagine games that allow one to choose Hamlet's lines in a dialogue tree or by other means.

Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which they appeared, were called, in the earlier epochs of the world, legislators, or prophets: a poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters . . . . Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.—Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is not enough to partake in the ideals on the silver screen. It is not enough to watch The Lord of The Rings and Bravheart and The Matrix; but those classical ideals must be exalted in our own lives and living ventures; and this present invention exalts classical ideals in video games, leading to novel forms of games and gaming, larger markets for video games, deeper soul and story in video games, and more profound educational roles for video games. Both The Inferno and The Odyssey are ultimately love stories. As are 300 and Braveheart, and every other epic. The very last words King Leonidas utters, as he faces certain death, are “My Queen! My wife. My love.” The final vision William Wallace has in Braveheart is that of his beloved wife, as her apparition walks through the crowd gathered at his execution, smiling gently his way, before the axe swings down; as one more poet-warrior is killed for fighting for freedom. This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle not for the monetary fruits of success, but for success itself—for the higher ideals whose implementation leads to higher consequences, as ideas have consequences—to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games, serving the growing demand for epic, virtuous manhood and pristine, virtuous womanhood; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

In La Vita Nuova, Dante describes the feeling that overcame him when he first laid eyes on a woman named Beatrice, “Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi,” meaning, “Behold, a deity stronger than I; who coming, shall rule over me.” Beatrice passed away at the age of twenty-four in 1290, and midway through his life, Dante realized that he had never written anything worthy of her. Soon he would write The Divine Comedy, where he journeys through hell in The Inferno to be with Beatrice. The last time he ever saw Beatrice, before she passed on, he wrote:

After this sonnet there appeared to me a marvelous vision in which I saw things which made me decide to write no more of this blessed one until I could do so more worthily. And to this end I apply myself as much as I can, as she indeed knows. Thus, if it shall please Him by whom all things live that my life continue for a few years, I hope to compose concerning her what has never been written in rhyme of any woman. And then may it please Him who is the Lord of courtesy that my soul may go to see the glory of my lady, that is of the blessed Beatrice, who now in glory beholds the face of Him who is blessed forever.—Dante, La Vita Nuova

Both The Inferno and The Odyssey are ultimately love stories. As are 300 and Braveheart, and every other epic. The very last words King Leonidas utters, as he faces certain death, are “My Queen! My wife. My love.” The final vision William Wallace has in Braveheart is that of his beloved wife, as her apparition walks through the crowd gathered at his execution, smiling gently his way, before the axe swings down; as one more poet-warrior is killed for fighting for freedom. This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle not for the monetary fruits of success, but for success itself—for the higher ideals whose implementation leads to higher consequences, as ideas have consequences—to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Dante's Inferno, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games, serving the growing demand for epic, virtuous manhood and pristine, virtuous womanhood; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

Her name was Laura, and she passed away a few years back in North Carolina in a tragic horse-riding accident on Thunder Mountain Road. Yes, we were going to get married; and I had already started writing Autumn Rangers during that infinite summer; though I never showed her any of it, as I never share anything until it is done. Laura liked the name Autumn—Autumn Wests—a traveling folksinger—a conservative bohemian—a rebel with a classical soul. A classical archetype—a living exaltation of Penelope's and Beatrice's virtuous beauty. I think Tom Petty wrote that song about her:

Well she was an American girl

Raised on promises

She couldn't help thinkin' that there

Was a little more to life

Somewhere else

After all it was a great big world

With lots of places to run to

Yeah, and if she had to die

Tryin she had one little promise

She was gonna keep

Oh yeah, all right

Take it easy baby

Make it last all night

She was an American girl

It was kind of cold that night

She stood alone on her balcony

She could the cars roll by

Out on 441

Like waves crashin' in the beach

And for one desperate moment there

He crept back in her memory

God it's so painful

Something that's so close

And still so far out of reach

That is the song Autumn is playing in her Convertible '69 Stingray, when Ranger first pulls up alongside her in his old Jeep, in Charleston, S.C.

Both The Inferno and The Odyssey are ultimately love stories. As are 300 and Braveheart, and every other epic. The very last words King Leonidas utters, as he faces certain death, are “My Queen! My wife. My love.” The final vision William Wallace has in Braveheart is that of his beloved wife, as her apparition walks through the crowd gathered at his execution, smiling gently his way, before the axe swings down; as one more poet-warrior is killed for fighting for freedom. This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle not for the monetary fruits of success, but for success itself—for the higher ideals whose implementation leads to higher consequences, as ideas have consequences—to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games, serving the growing demand for epic, virtuous manhood and pristine, virtuous womanhood; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

Dante walks through hell to be with Beatrice, and Odysseus forgoes immortality with the goddess Calypso to risk his life upon the stormy seas to return on home to faithful Penelope; whose heroic fidelity, grace, and with protects and sustains their home all those years he's gone. So it is that epic romance—exalted by Athens and Jerusalem—is the center and circumference of civilization; and this book is a battle for that epic soul—for a renaissance wherein romance is once again exalted in our music, art, novels, and video games. And then shall government and business follow suit, for art is culture's flagship.

As the Pequod was well out to sea before Captain Ahab stepped forth from his cabin, allow me to finally introduce our mentor in this introduction—Jack Bogle, the founder and former CEO of Vanguard, and the author of numerous eloquent books and speeches woven from the same classical heritage our Founding Fathers held in high regard. The Greeks took great pride in rendering word deed, and Jack writes:

So dream your own dreams, but act on them too. Action, always action is required on the ever-dangerous odyssey that each of our lives must follow. Be good human beings. Respect tradition and study the great thinkers of our heritage.—Jack Bogle: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes speech

As Virgil lead Dante up through The Inferno to Purgatorio and Paradisio; and as Athena disguised herself as a wise man named Mentor to guide Odysseus's son Telemachus; so too shall Jack lead us across the threshold on this journey, and on through Wall Street's contemporary divine comedy, as he speaks words inspired by those rugged eighteenth-century souls of the American Enlightenment.

As this book is titled The Hero's Journey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology, now would be a good time to define some of the title's terms. Regarding entrepreneurship, Jack Bogle cites Schumpeter and Franklin:

In today's grandiose era of capitalism, the word “entrepreneur” has come to be commonly associated with those who are motivated to create new enterprises largely by the desire for personal wealth or even greed. But at its best, entrepreneurship entails something far more important than mere money. Heed the words of the great Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to recognize entrepreneurship as the vital force that drives economic growth. In his Theory of Economic Development, written nearly a century ago, Schumpeter dismissed material and monetary gain as the prime mover of the entrepreneur, finding motivations like these to be far more powerful: (1) “The joy of creating, of getting things done, of simply exercising one's energy and ingenuity,” and (2) “The will to conquer, the impulse to fight . . . to succeed for the sake, not of the fruits of success, but of success itself.”—Bogle, Vanguard, Saga of Heroes This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle not for the monetary fruits of success, but for success itself—for the higher ideals whose implementation leads to higher consequences, as ideas have consequences—to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

That's the way it was in 18th century America, at least in the case of Benjamin Franklin. For Franklin, fairly described as “America's First Entrepreneur,” the getting of money was always a means to an end, not an end in itself. The enterprises he created were designed for the public weal, not for his personal profit. When Franklin joined with his colleagues in founding The Philadelphia Contributionship in 1752, it was a mutual company owned by its policyholders. This combination of ownership and service—creating a true mutuality of interest between the owners of a firm and its managers—was not then, nor is it now, the common mode of business organization, but The Contributionship has thrived to this day.

Franklin also founded a library, an academy and college, a hospital, and a learned society, all for the benefit of his community. Not bad! His inventions followed the same philosophy. He made no attempt to patent the lightning rod for his own profit; and he declined the offer for a patent on the “Franklin stove” that revolutionized the efficiency of home heating, with great benefit to the public at large.—Bogle, Vanguard, Saga of Heroes,

http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20070227.htm

It is not every day that someone founds a $1.2 trillion Wall Street institution, let alone one built on classical idealism which serves millions of investors with superior returns year, after year, after year, but Bogle considers himself neither a hero nor even an entrepreneur. He humbly describes his occupation:

But even as I disclaim the credentials of the hero, of the leader, of the business manager, and even of the entrepreneur, I shamelessly proclaim my credentials as an idealist. Even more, I am an idealist who revels in the values of the Enlightenment and holds high his admiration for the brilliance and the character of the great thinkers, great doers, and great adventurers of the 18th century, men (as it happens, in particular our nation's Founding Fathers) who give birth to our modern world.—John C. Bogle, Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, 2007 HJEF

So it is that our mentor John Bogle directs us to the epic idealism of those Founding Fathers; and this book shall ride with their wisdom throughout, from Jefferson, to Hamilton, to Franklin, to Madison, to Jay, to Washington, to Adams. T. S. Eliot spoke of the community of immortal souls, and this book rides forever West with that fellowship of eternal spirits. I hope you join us in this renaissance. For this present invention will foster video games that allows one to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond.

It's funny how life works, and as time goes by all the streams one is drawn towards inevitably lead on out towards the very same ocean. Joseph Campbell wrote, “Follow your bliss, and doors will open where there were none before.” Just before Christmas a few years back, Laura and I visited Williamsburg and Monticello. She was a fan of the Founding Fathers. She'd been a model, and a singer in Paris for four years, but she came on back home, for she had that deep, thundering sense of American romance. I saw it in her eyes and fell in love with it—that yearning for the West—for honor, truth, and romance—to not just live, but to render an epic story in this one life we have been given. As beautiful as she was, her soul was even more beautiful—a soul which made writing poetry easy, for you knew that the only way it could be is if it would always be; thusly proving eternity with her laugh and smile—her profile caught silhouetted against the Carolina-blue sunset, riding shotgun in my Jeep that fine September day, whence the Southern air clears out to make way for autumn's crispness. It was one day after 9/11—it was my birthday. And she took me on out to a lake out in Chatham County—Paradise Lake it was called. And with summer on the wane, we were the only ones there on that still night. It was now getting dark so early; and how ironically peaceful it was, with 9/11's tragedy marking the day before. And as Beatrice exalted Dante to higher art, so too shall She exalt us to higher video games wherein women are exalted creatures. This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Dante's Inferno, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games; while serving the vast and growing demand for epic, exalted forms of manhood and womanhood across all culture; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

She passed on one fine March day not six months later, but not before she taught me about the definitive reality of that eternal soul Socrates was sentenced to death for exalting. We were going to see a movie that night, and her last words on the phone that Carolina spring day had been, “It's beautiful out. I'm going to catch a quick ride before sunset. I wish this day could last forever.” She passed on doing what she loved best—riding freely across those fields just outside of Chapel Hill. She passed on all too soon—in tragedy, leaving infinite sadness in her wake—but also infinite inspiration; a debt which could never be repaid by all the art in the universe. But creation against all odds is not the poet's choice, but the poet's fate, and it is up to us; we the living, to exalt the story of the beauty we came to know. To reach out towards that ungraspable phantom of life.

Imagine a country singer who reveled in the Founding Fathers—Autumn Wests is her name. A mischievous wild child who rebelled, made some wrong turns and married the wrong guy, who fell in the fallen American context which had exiled its Founder's principles, but who, like Odysseus, never stopped yearning for that truer home. She meets Ranger McCoy when she helps him out of a bind, and by and by he lets her in on APRIL, explaining why he—a US Marine—is on the run in his own country. 'Tis just a story—this novel Autumn Rangers—but as Hamlet said, “The play's the thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.”

“When storytelling declines, the result is decadence,” wrote Aristotle in his Poetics. He ranked the elements of drama in the order of importance, placing story and character first, and spectacle and music last. Today our art—our video games and films—oft celebrates these elements in their inverted order; while postmodern poets and novelists no longer bother endowing their works with characters and plots via which noble character is manifested. Oscar Wilde wrote “life imitates art,” and our business leaders and politicians have followed suit in dismissing character and natural, individual rights, while growing soulless bureaucracies and ruling via spectacle and PR. This present invention will foster an exalted renaissance in video games that allows one to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond. Such games will result in epic, exalted storytelling in the realm of games; and thus Aristotle's renaissance will be realized, as epic story exalts the soul.

But the freshmen yet show up to college with immortal souls, and they yearn for Bogle's Battle and Homer's Odyssey. And the rising generation shall bring the fundamental, classics values—from where all entrepreneurial value derive—on back in an artistic renaissance. As the pen is mightier than the sword, this book is a ship with ironsides; with her Western Canon aimed at postmodern vessels blocking passage on out to the renaissance.

So it is that I define art as idealism's primary vessel; and all wealth's primary inspiration. General MacArthur said, “it must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh,” and all great, epic, enduring art is penned in honor of the moral soul—that ineffable yearning for the third act's thundering justice; be it rendered by Homer or the Biblical prophets. And the rising generation shall know such art—both Homer's and that of contemporary poets composing in the context of the classics.

This present invention will foster video games that allows one to battle for the soul in classical realms and worlds such as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond.

In The Soul of Battle, Victor Davis Hanson tells us that it is the moral soul which ultimately grants not only art and artists, but armies and their leaders, and thus entire civilizations, their advantage:

“What, then, is the soul of battle? A rare thing indeed that arises only when free men march unabashedly toward the heartland of their enemy in hopes of saving the doomed, when their vast armies are aimed at salvation and liberation, not conquest and enslavement. Only then does battle take on a spiritual dimension, one that defines a culture, teaches it what civic militarism is and how it is properly used. Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, and other great marshals used their tactical and strategic genius to alter history through the brutality of their armies. None led democratic soldiers. They freed no slaves nor liberated the oppressed. They were all agressors, who created their matchless forces to kill rather than preserve. As was true of most great captains of history, they fought for years on end, without democratic audit, and sought absolute rule as a prize of their victories. None were great men, and praise of their military prowess is forever tainted by the evil they wrought and the innocent they killed. They and their armies were without moral sense and purpose, and thus their battles, tactically brilliant through they were, were soulless.”—The Soul of Battle, Victor Davis Hanson, p. 5

This present invention will foster video games that allows one to battle for the soul, and to stand for noble ideas in both word and deed, as noble ideas have noble consequences, when rendered via action in the gameworld and beyond.

John Bogle reflects on the soul in The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism, and its central role in capitalism:

“The human soul, as Thomas Aquinas defined it, is the ‘form of the body, the vital power animating, pervading, and shaping an individual from the moment of conception, drawing all the energies of life into a unity.’ In our temporal world, the soul of capitalism is the vital power that has animated, pervaded, and shaped our economic system, drawing all of its energies into a unity. In this sense, it is no overstatement to describe the effort we must make to return the system to its proud roots with these words: the battle to restore the soul of capitalism.”—Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

This present invention will foster video games that allows one to fight for the soul; and to stand for noble ideas, as noble ideas have noble consequences.

Look closely and you will see the moral soul at the center and circumference of all lasting endeavors. Do not take my work for it—listen to Martin Luther King Jr., Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci.

“If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.”—M L K

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: ‘that God governs in the affairs of man.’ And if a sparrow cannot fail to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little partial local interest; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, or conquest.—Benjamin Franklin. This present invention will foster video games that allows one to hear words such as Benjamin Franklin's, and then choose to fight for the soul, instead of chainsaw monsters, kill cops, and hire and kill hookers in boring, faux open-ended worlds, where there is no opportunity to fight for what's right, as there is no right; and too, this invention shall allow in-game characters to stand for noble ideas in word and deed, as noble ideas, when acted upon, have noble consequences.

Who sows virtue reaps honor.—Leonardo da Vinci

Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.—Leonardo da Vinci

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserve.—Leonardo da Vinci

So it is that when video games are endowed with exalted soul, they will achieve art. And again; life imitates art; and thus the higher goal of artistic entrepreneurship & technology is a renaissance. This present invention will foster video games that allows one to fight for the soul; and to stand for noble ideas, as noble ideas have noble consequences.

Benjamin Franklin—America's original entrepreneur—made a list of twelve precepts to live by, whereupon he realized he'd forgotten the most important one: “13. Humility: Imitate Socrates and Jesus.” For one cannot serve two masters, and what does it profit one to gain the world and lose their soul? While Harvard leads the world's universities with a thirty-five-billion dollar endowment, a former Harvard Dean recently wrote, Excellence Without Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education. Again we see the word “soul” in the title of a book lamenting its diminished stature in modern culture, but I prefer Bogle's title, for he suggests that the soul is yet something worth fighting for in The Battle For The Soul of Capitalism. This present invention will foster video games that allows one to fight for the soul; and to stand for noble ideas, as noble ideas have noble consequences.

And this invention professes that opportunity abounds to join this battle for the soul in:

1) literature

2) art

3) film

4) video games

5) economics

6) science

7) education/colleges/universities

8) rights management systems for creators

9) ideals in innovation

10) a cultural renaissance

While the classical ideals have been shorted, hedged against, and deconstructed on all fronts to make way for bureaucratic wealth transfer, I yet maintain that ideals are one's greatest investment. And opportunity abounds to call the subprime bluff and raise them. For rust cannot tarnish ideals, thieves cannot steal them, and moths cannot destroy them. And there is no greater wealth to be found than rendering ideals real in living ventures. While paper currencies are devalued as more paper money is printed, the Great Books only increase with value with each printed volume.

Moses consulted not case studies in Starbucks, but God upon a Mountaintop when he came up with his fundamental theory of economics, “Thou shalt not steal.” And with the same courage that Achilles took to battle, Socrates addressed the Athenian jury with a basic treatise on economics and the origin of wealth:

“For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, I am a mischievous person. But if any one says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whichever you do, understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.”—Socrates Apology

Socrates did not get tenure for The Apology, but rather he was sentenced to death by peer review; and if ever you should sojourn into the ornate Princeton Chapel, you will see Socrates in the stained glass, alongside the prophets. I oft wonder what artist enshrined Socrates up there—a craftsman now long passed on—but yet I remember them to my class, along with all kindred spirits and unsung heroes in this community of immortal souls, who did their essential part in propagating the vast wealth of our heritage. Bogle quoted Helen Keller in his Vanguard: Saga of Heroes speech to salute this fellowship of humble heroes: “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

John Milton defined heroism in Paradise Lost, which William Fay, the producer of 300, The Patriot, and Batman Begins, will soon be bringing to life on the silver screen:

Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak

Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise

By simply meek: that suffering for truth's sake

Is fortitude to highest victory,—Paradise Lost, Milton

I forwarded the above Socrates quote to Bogle, and it ended up in another classic speech: Enough. Commencement Address MBA Graduates of the McDonough School of Business by John C. Bogle, founder, The Vanguard Group Upon receiving the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Georgetown University. The speech opens with:

“Here's how I recall the wonderful story that sets the theme for my remarks today: At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, the author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have . . . Enough.”

“Enough. I was stunned by its simple eloquence, to say nothing of its relevance to some of the vital issues arising in American society today. Many of them revolve around money—yes, money—increasingly, in our “bottom line” society, the Great God of prestige, the Great Measure of the Man (and Woman). So this morning I have the temerity to ask you soon-to-be-minted MBA graduates, most of whom will enter the world of commerce, to consider with me the role of “enough” in business and entrepreneurship in our society, “enough” in the dominant role of the financial system in our economy, and “enough” in the values you will bring to the fields you choose for your careers.”—John C. Bogle—http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20070518.htm

“We've all got it coming,” says Clint Eastwood towards the end of Unforgiven, and Socrates notes that while death comes to all, wickedness runs far faster than death and destroys many souls for all eternity. “A coward ides many times before his death,” wrote Shakespeare.

However, by acting nobly in the service of higher ideals; the immortal soul can obtain its apotheosis along the classic hero's journey and escape wickedness forever. Joseph Campbell defines heroism with, “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” And at his final trial Socrates compares himself to the heroic Achilles in battle, stating that he would be quite the coward to refrain from speaking Truth out of fear of death. Socrates states:

Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying. Socrates, The Apology

Which brings us to the unsung heroes of our day—those selfless soldiers who all too often give that “last full measure of devotion” to protect our freedom, and remind us that like Socrates, we professors must all rise to our duty of speaking truth and standing for virtue—in our lives, in our ventures, in our art. This present invention would foster video games honoring brave soldiers fighting and dying for higher ideals—not GTA thugs and GOW chainsaw fanboys. If brave soldiers can die to protect the principles of our Constitution, certainly we ought be grateful for the far easier task of living to exalt those principles and creating games that do the same; while doing our best to bring them on home safely. Corporal Jason L. Dunham received the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously, and this is his somber, and infinitely noble, citation:

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Rifle Squad Leader, 4th Platoon, Company K, Third Battalion, Seventh Marines (Reinforced), Regimental Combat Team 7, First Marine Division (Reinforced), on 14 Apr. 2004. Corporal Dunham's squad was conducting a reconnaissance mission in the town of Karabilah, Iraq, when they heard rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire erupt approximately two kilometers to the west. Corporal Dunham led his Combined Anti-Armor Team towards the engagement to provide fire support to their Battalion Commander's convoy, which had been ambushed as it was traveling to Camp Husaybah. As Corporal Dunham and his Marines advanced, they quickly began to receive enemy fire. Corporal Dunham ordered his squad to dismount their vehicles and led one of his fire teams on foot several blocks south of the ambushed convoy. Discovering seven Iraqi vehicles in a column attempting to depart, Corporal Dunham and his team stopped the vehicles to search them for weapons. As they approached the vehicles, an insurgent leaped out and attacked Corporal Dunham. Corporal Dunham wrestled the insurgent to the ground and in the ensuing struggle saw the insurgent release a grenade. Corporal Dunham immediately alerted his fellow Marines to the threat. Aware of the imminent danger and without hesitation, Corporal Dunham covered the grenade with his helmet and body, bearing the brunt of the explosion and shielding his Marines from the blast. In an ultimate and selfless act of bravery in which he was mortally wounded, he saved the lives of at least two fellow Marines. By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty, Corporal Dunham gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.—Medal of Honor citation, Marines Magazine

The Dark Ages lasted for hundreds of years—from 476 to 1000 AD. Art, innovation, and literature declined along with contemporary written history. A general demographic decline accompanied limited cultural achievements. “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence,” and as they turned away from the classics and higher art lauding the heroic, and towards bread and circuses—towards reality TV and base spectacle—the soul, and thus civilization, faltered.

When movies forget the thundering third act whence justice is rendered, they shall cease being art. In the original 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy lives and the bad guy goes to jail. In the recent Hollywood remake, the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away free, as postmodern producers get away with murder. Again, “life imitates art,” and modern mutual funds and financial institutions also get away with billions upon billions of dollars derived from financial “engineering,” “sub-prime” accounting standards, and transaction fees; as if trading stocks is more important than creating products; as if Casinos generate more wealth than factories; as if gambling and subterfuge can replace long-term wealth generation via entrepreneurship's classic integrity and individual innovation, as if creative accounting is superior to the creative arts, and as if spectacle shall forever trump character and story, as if the taxing bureaucracy is the source of art and innovation. In the original Beowulf our hero slays Grendel's mother, but in the Hollywood remake, he sleeps with her; and University's that were funded by entrepreneurs all too often celebrate entrepreneurial precepts as the rare exception—not the pervading rule.

The Italian Renaissance, which spanned the period from the end of the 1400's to about 1600, sailed beyond the Dark Ages by the immortal stars of classical antiquity. Renaissance scholars again sought out the Great Books and Classics in the ancient monastic libraries and incorporated them in education and culture. And so too do we march on—following the lead of the immortal heroes such as da Vinci who stated, “Who sows virtue reaps honor,” and “Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.” Da Vinci wrote, “the depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserve” and Martin Luther King Jr. agreed, “If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” And the title of John C. Bogle's Battle for The Soul of Capitalism says it all, as it suggests we read Adam Smith in order, with A Theory of Moral Sentiments preceding The Wealth of Nations, for as Socrates stipulated, all true wealth comes from virtue—the immortal soul, and not virtue from wealth.

Vast opportunities exist to incorporate the soul of The Iliad and The Odyssey—of Shakespeare, the Bible, and The Inferno—in video games. The Mona Lisa, two dimensional and stationary, yet towers over the female characters in modern games in spirit and soul; as do Dante's Beatrice, Odysseus's Penelope, and Ranger's Autumn. The video games also lack classical, epic men, who ride into town and clean house as Odysseus does in The Odyssey; epic men who reunite families, as that other Man With No Name did in Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars. Such art is banned these days; but listen to the whispers and you will hear that it is in great demand.

Knowledge of the classics—the spiritual eternities—not material wealth—became the true mark of wealth during the Renaissance, and so shall it be again. The movie 300 demonstrated that the rising generation is longing for the classical spirit and soul; and Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 is revolutionizing academia with its simple precept that the spirit of our law and literature—of The Constitution and Hamlet—derive from the same place—the classical Judeo Christian heritage. And so that which had been divided into sub-prime, student-debt funded bureaucracies of business, law, film, art, and accounting; is reunited in truth and the simplicity of soul—in a classical liberal arts education—in a foundational renaissance.

There are two Hero's Journeys in every class—the first is through the Great Books, and the second is the one each student walks alone—in a screenplay or business plan for their living ventures; for the reason we read the Greats is not for tenure, but to embolden the natural ideals of our soul and gain the courage to follow our better angels and nobler dreams. The Odyssey has lasted over 2800 years because it reminds us of that immortal justice—eventually truth prevails. This present invention would foster video games wherein one could walk the hero's journey.

Opportunity abounds to not only read those dusty old texts, but to render their ideals real in the living context via action. We've been leaving billions on the shelves—billions and far more, including those mythical entities which cannot be counted, but which count for everything. And so we march—we march for the renaissance.

We have not the luxury of the Phaecians to merely watch The Lord of The Rings and Iron Man and listen to pirated music on our ipods, for liberty—that liberty which has been gifted us via blood, sweat, and tears, which was all too often bought and paid for with that last full measure of devotion—requires eternal vigilance.

Autumn Rangers is just a novel—a love story of courage and conviction—a debt an artist tries to pay back for having glimpsed eternity's beauty in a woman's soul; as had Dante and Homer. And it's penned in humility and great gratitude towards those true heroes such as Cpl. Jason Dunham. Too often our art discounts or discredits the selfless heroism of the American soldier—that very Odysseus who makes art possible, by protecting that Constitution which recognizes the freedom of speech as a natural right; as well as the ability to protect and profit from one's creations—one's private property born by their creative talents—as a Natural Right. Too often we fall short in serving the moral ideals upon which our most unique freedom was founded; and while soldiers selflessly give their lives for it, artists, who sleep peaceably at night because of those rugged Marines, won't let the better angels of their souls salute the soldier. Well, the character of Ranger McCoy goes out to every modern-day Odysseus out there; and Autumn Wests goes out to every modern-day Penelope and Beatrice; for I glimpsed all their classic souls in Laura; and I have dedicated this pen to serving and exalting it.

Joseph Conrad wrote, “I much prefer the soldier to the philosopher,” and Lincoln's words come to mind in writing about the artists' and authors' power, when contrasted to the soldier's actions:

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

All forms of morality and religion are better grasped in humble individual action than collective bureaucracies, who are perpetually at war with the individual and their natural rights, condemning today's prophets while benefiting immensely from those their forefathers condemned yesterday; as they attempt to privatize the profits and socialize the risk for the greater good of humanity. Moses and Jesus did not hang out in churches and country clubs; but they ranged over the earth—its cities and villages alike. They attended not universities, but went into the wilderness and up mountains to receive their epic wisdom. They served not the bureaucracy, but the classic, rugged, immortal soul. They were individuals with Natural Rights that the bureaucracies of their day tried to take away. But the bureaucracies failed, even in taking the Prophet's lives; for their actions—their words and deeds—their Apotheosis—became immortal in Epic Story.

Today's bureaucracies emphasize finance, as the today's bureaucracies sit close to the money pump. They create the currency by which they benevolently attempt to claim all art, creativity, and natural capital; and that is the source of the decline. When two women came before King Solomon, each claiming that the baby was theirs, King Solomon suggested that he cut the baby in half. So it is that the lesser artists and philosophers are quite content with half the baby—profiting from the bureaucracy which promises to support art and entrepreneurship, while cutting the entities in half. Creating money out of thin air is the master irony from which all ironies descend, and as this master is a jealous master, all art and education are creating in its image—education that teaches nothing, art that degrades instead of exalting, literature that banishes plot and character, and science that exalts string theory and politics over truth. All of these entities are well-funded; yet without truth, they are artless and soulless, and shall wither with their temporal bureaucracies.

True art reminds us of our individuality—of our natural rights which come from a higher authority—but any bureaucracy that profits from placing students in vast debts has little use for higher authorities and that Natural Law that is free to all. And by and by the decline, that none can deny, sets in; as the fountainhead of all wealth is cut off. This present invention would allow one to walk the hero's journey in restoring that fountainhead.

For it is not the bureaucracy, but the humble individual who innovates. It is not the bureaucracy, but the individual who creates wealth. It is the individual alone who speaks truth to power; it is the individual who breaks free from the pack. It is the individual alone who can give their life to a higher cause—all a bureaucracy can do is take it. And it is the individual—the thousands of heroes with a thousand faces—who alone can walk the hero's journey by which all peace and prosperity is born—that peace and prosperity which is endlessly taxed and opposed by the bureaucracy, even while they lay claim to all its glory.

The individual is idealism's wellspring. Western Culture is one long story of the few, armed with logic, reason, and Natural Rights; against the indulgent many, often headed by a tyrant. From Odysseus facing down the mob of suitors, to Jesus and Socrates facing down the mob of their peers, to the Founding Fathers facing down a king and his armies, to the 300 Spartans lead by King Leonidas:

XERXES: “There will be no glory in your sacrifice. I will erase even the memory of Sparta from the histories! Every piece of Greek parchment shall be burned. Every Greek historian, and every scribe shall have their eyes pulled out, and their tongues cut from their mouths. Why, uttering the very name of Sparta, or Leonidas, will be punishable by death! The world will never know you existed at all!”, 300 the movie

KING LEONIDAS—“The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a god-king can bleed.”, 300 the movie

Cast your gaze through history and you will see that poetic words and exalted ideals and enduring wealth never came from governments, but rather from individuals blessed with governments that respected individual rights as Sacred. Look throughout the ages, and you will see no enduring maxim that is not connected with an individual's name; be it Newton's calculus, or Homer's Odyssey, or Moses' law, or Einstein's relativity, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Though they stand upon the shoulders of giants, the individual is the one who writes The Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare's Hamlet and divines Newton's Laws and Maxwell's Equations. The individual is the source of the Soul, and as our Founding Fathers recognized the vast wealth of the Soul, they gifted us a Constitution that exalts Natural Rights. And this book—The Hero's Journey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology—solemnly pledges to serve all individuals in their battle for the Soul, as this rising Fellowship renders ideals real on our journey on out towards the renaissance. There's a showdown coming, I know, and I ain't backin' down.

Bogle quotes Joseph Campbell—the author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the teacher who has enriched us all with “myths to live by”—in his speech at West Point which salutes the selfless heroism of Cpl. Jason Dunham:

“As I visit the Academy once again, and speak to you this evening, my mind keeps returning this stark contrast: On the one hand, your commitment to placing your own self-interest aside in favor of service to our great nation, especially during the deeply troubled times in which we live. On the other hand, the commitment of so many of our corporate, investment, and mutual fund leaders to placing their own self-interest ahead of the stewardship we owe to those 100 million citizens who have entrusted their hard-earned assets to our financial markets. While the nation struggles with its finances, too many members of our financial community wallow in the gross excesses of modern life, often in ostentatious mansions, yachts and private jets made possible largely by a soaring stock market that seems totally unconcerned about the risks that abound today—terrorism, war, risky investments, staggering amounts of borrowed money in our private sector and public sector alike, and many more.”

“In the recent stock market bubble, we witnessed the culmination of an era in which our business corporations and our financial institutions, working in tacit harmony, corrupted the traditional nature of capitalism, shattering both confidence in the markets and the accumulated wealth of countless American families. Something went profoundly wrong, fundamentally and pervasively, in corporate America. At the root of the problem, in the broadest sense, was a societal change aptly described by these words from the teacher Joseph Campbell: “In medieval times, as you approached the city, your eye was taken by the Cathedral. Today, it's the towers of commerce. It's business, business, business.” We had become what Campbell called a “bottom-line society.” But, as I added, “our society came to measure the wrong bottom line: form over substance, prestige over virtue, money over achievement, charisma over character, the ephemeral over the enduring, even mammon over God.”

“These words may seem strong, but I expressed the idea far more strongly two years ago in this self-explanatory letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal:

“After reading your article about the ($185 million) compensation package recently paid to Richard Grasso, President of the New York Stock Exchange, his blistering op-ed response, and your editorial—and whatever all that petty bickering suggests about sums so enormous that few Americans can even imagine them—I read Michael Phillips' moving front-page story about the selfless heroism of Cpl. Jason Dunham in Iraq. I lingered on his every word, every moment, every explosion, every turn for the worse, every hope for survival. And then the devastating news: At 4:43 p.m. on April 22, Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham died.

“Look, I'm just a businessman. And a Republican too. But I hope and pray that all of us who have basked in the glorious financial excesses of modern-day managers' capitalism will take a brief timeout from all of our getting and our self-important lives, get down on our knees, and say a prayer for those who have given—sadly, on our behalf—what Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion.”

“I pray that none of you here today will be called upon to give that last full measure of devotion to the fine nation you proudly serve. But even after today's clouds have passed—as they will—I also hope you will join the millions of other young men and women of your generation who share your values and your commitment. As I say in my new book, dedicated to my twelve grandchildren (five of whom are your contemporaries): “My generation has left America with much to be set right; you have the opportunity of a lifetime to fix what has been broken. Hold high your idealism and your values. Remember always that even one person can make a difference. And do your part ‘to begin the world anew.’” Investment Wisdom and Human Values, Remarks by John C. Bogle, Founder and Former Chairman, The Vanguard Group, “Principles of Economics” at The United States Military Academy

Principles of Economics. Remember that. For without principle, economics, as well as all of science, art, and literature are for naught. “The universe is moral,” stated Emerson, and that is why Ranger McCoy must restore APRIL's moral soul. For principle does not come from science, but from a higher source. Do not take my word it, but heed the words of the world's greatest scientist, who expresses the soul of entrepreneurship's natural service:

“The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us westerners in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind.”—Albert Einstein

So come now and ride with Einstein. Ride with the Great Books and Classics—with that vast wealth that was so often paid for by blood, sweat, and tears—by exile and persecution—and then given to all freely. The great books we shall read along this journey all together cost less than a textbook. Let us ride with Jack Bogle and the Founding Fathers. With Neo and Morpheus, with Luke and Obe Wan Kenobe, with Frodo and Gandalf. Let us ride with Homer and Socrates—with Moses and Jesus—on both the external and internal hero's journeys; for Aristotle reminds us that the plot and subplot must venture forth in parallel—that the physical action must dance with the dramatic action. Let us ride with Autumn and Ranger, as they strive to upload APRIL's moral soul before it's too—well, it can't be too late, and for they cannot, and will not fail.

Yes—there's a showdown comin'. And look closely, and you'll see that 45 is beginning to glint gold.

FIELD OF INVENTION

Opportunity abounds to create video games with souls, deep intellect, and exalted spirits by endowing them with that which renders mankind unique and exalts his greater heroes—ideas and ideals. From dialogue, action, and world trees that branch according to the profound ideas that are expressed, or remain unspoken, to the moral premise, to ideas having consequences, to a vampire or zombie game wherein the viruses are ideas, opportunity abounds to exalt video games with superior gameplay. As every single work of classic literature centers about a moral premise and classical ideals, and the moral Character of the protagonist, from Hamlet, to Odysseus, to Dante, to Jesus, to Socrates is founded upon ideas; endowing games with ideas that have consequences and a moral premise will result in games that achieve higher art.

Of course video game designers and creators always sell their product with “cinematic storytelling,” and “deep, profound story,” but they are lying when they are not merely hyping. As we shall see documented throughout this patent application, their hype is pure, unadulterated hype, and in the present invention, one will be allowed to reason with hypesters, explaining to them how lying is uncool and how it results in long-term detriments to society. And when reasoning with them does not work, the player will be allowed to shoot all the fanboys and superficial producers hyping movies based on video games within the realm of the gameworld. Now that would be more fun an enjoyable than merely killing innocent civilians and prostitutes, thusly providing superior gameplay—even superior to the bestselling game of all time. And thus opportunity abounds for a different approach to storytelling and gameplay—to dialogue and actions trees—in video games.

The video game industry has grown most conservative and has changed little, if at all, since the days of Atari. It's still about pixels shooting pixels. To date, deep, profound ideas have not been introduced to the realm of gaming. Nowhere can one play The Odyssey, where the only way to win—to make it on home to Penelope—is to choose the correct and moral action and dialogue. Imagine a game that when the correct dialogue was chosen, the game advanced, as one heard Odysseus speaking his poetic lines, along with Homer's exalted narrative. When the incorrect dialogue choice was chosen, the game would veer from the original plot, and Odysseus's chance of ever making it home would be endangered. Such a paradigm and novel approach—rewarding the character for following the plotline of spoken dialogue and action and moral choices—could be applied and extended to numerous properties, classic, present, and future, from Hamlet to Autumn Rangers.

MORE PRIOR ART

While video game creators engage in hype about “story” to sell games, that hype is the exact antithesis of story. All classical stories, from The Odyssey on down, are bolstered and exalted by characters who match word and deed, unlike modern game creators, producers, and developers.

The blog Video Game Story Movies reports,

• • “Cliffyb/WyckyG—Master Hypesters—anti-story—anti art: New Line=Bottom Line
  • Cliffyb & WyckyG have such massive egos that they think that their egos alone can carry the Gears of War movie, sans story, sans poetry, sans art, sans plot, sans character.
  • Beattie doesn't have a Lord of the Rings in his soul. He's a Hollywood hack who detests story as much as Cliffyb & Wyckyg. Stuartyb has never written a deep, profound, meaningful story. The sooner he gets the hell out of Hollywood, the better off we'll all be.
  • In the February 2007, #212, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Shoe & Shawn Elliott report, in an article called: Afterthoughts: Gears of War, in an interview with CliffyB:
  • EGM: The Mad World trailer (of Gears of War) is pretty cool, but you never have that big encounter in the game, and you never really explore the human, emotional side of the story like the commercial hints at. False advertising?”

So it is that time and again, false advertising and hype have been substituted for any story or plot or character in video games. As just as it is easier to print a fiat dollar and place people in debt than it is to manufacture something, it is easier to hype a plotless, storyless game, than it is to actually innovate, read the Great Books, and endow games with their classical soul.

• • Jonas Allen writes at http://www.dailygame.net/news/archives/006086.php:
    • Cliffy B. can kiss my ass. I mean that in the most polite way possible. Before you start penning the hate mail, take a look at our Gears of War review. That's right, it won an Editor's Choice award. So why the venom for Cliffy B.? Because that was the hardest Editor's Choice award I've ever doled out. I literally lost sleep before writing our review, because I couldn't decide whether Gears of War was really worth the score. At the end of the day, there aren't any significant faults with the game, and the gameplay mechanics have me itching to play more, so the award was warranted. But the game's so-called story made it really tempting to score Gears of War an 8.9 out of spite.
  • http://videogamestorymovies.blogspot.com/2007/10/cliffybwyckyg-master-hypesters-anit.html writes:
    • “I would like to challenge Cliffyb and WyckyG to a televised debate regarding New Line's hype-before-art tactics, and their use of hype, money and intimidation to shut true story, filmmakers, and artists out of Hollywood. The culture is declining, the family is breaking up, abortions are soaring, Wall street's hedge fund contortionists and subprime hawkers are getting richer on the backs of the middle class, and Cliffyb & Wyckyg are laughing all the way on down, as brave souls are sent to foreign shores to fight and die for the ever-augmenting debauchery.
    • “What is needed is more transparency. Where does New Line get its money, and why do they oppose classic, majestic, epic art and story with plot, character, and soul? Wall Street has destroyed the classic american family, so it makes sense that New Line, who works for Wall Street, also detests story, plot, character, spirit, and soul.
    • “As the gap between the poor and rich grows, as WyckyG and Cliffyb drive their fancy cars around town, story and art die, all to serve New Line's bottom line via hype, hype, and hype. New Line's new name should be Bottom Line.
  • “And like all the modern hipster-hypseter fanboy hedge funds, they want to drag all of culture down with them, like the Whale at the end of Moby Dick.
  • “But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;—at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.
  • Long after all the fanboyisms have faded, and all the WyckyG and CliffyB Bottom Line hype has faded from eclipsing Truth and Beauty, profound, eloquent art such as Moby Dick will rise again.
  • “I know how all those fanboy hedge fund managers play—I know how the Hollywood douchebags run the town, with their little, violent blurbs and backstabbing.
  • So go ahead, make my day.—http://videogamestorymovies.blogspot.com/2007/10/cliffybwyckyg-master-hypesters-anit.html

Novel Form of Zombie/Vampire Game

Imagine a typical vampire or zombie game wherein the viruses were ideas. The state of being a vampire or being a zombie was passed via ideas; not mere physical encounters, as is the case in game, after game, after game. In-game characters who heard the preachings and teachings of Marx too often would become communists, socialists, feminists, and Marxists. In-game characters who heard the preachings and teachings of Fed-bubble-creating Keynesians would become tenured economists, writing long, boring tomes justifying or concealing the banks plundering savings and retirement during the dot-com stock bubble, seizing homes during the housing bubble, and stealing the whole way on down via the inflation tax. The tenured professors and media are rewarded with billions upon billions of fiat dollars for the articles. It would be up to our protagonist to save civilization and society—to stand up for the Constitution which does not authorize private banks to print money and place all of entirety in vast debt. The protagonist's wife and children would be assaulted non-stop on TV, in school, at college, and at work with the fiatocracy's dumbed-down propaganda and its ceaseless debauchery. The protagonist would have the opportunity to enlighten everyone he comes in contact with by quoting Hayek, Mises, Jefferson, Jackson, Shakespeare, and the Bible, trying to reason with them. But should the fiat virus spread, and the critical mass become happy and content with being zombies and vampires, the fiatocracy's jack-booted thugs will be sent forth to kill the protagonist, deny him his property, and destroy his Character. At this point the game would rely more on action than ideas; as when the language has been destroyed by postmodern feminist instructors, university presidents who never read, and their silent fiat accomplices who treat the university more like a hedge fund than an educational institution, there is no longer any hope for winning by words and reason alone. Of course this is why the fiatocracy and feminists oppose the Constitution, the freedom of speech, and the right to bear arms, as after the bankers take everyone's savings, homes, and families, gutting a country of its natural wealth, the only thing left to take is the peoples' lives. And so, in this game, if the Constitution is lost via the destruction of the language, countless lives will be lost on down the line. While GTA never allows one to fight for the Constitution and the right to life, this present video game would allow the protagonist to fight for the right to life found in the spirit of both The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; in Shakespeare and the Bible, in Dante and Homer, in Plato and Aristotle. Opportunity abounds to render games with the Western Soul.

• • Video Game Storytelling Stinks, Needs To Get Better, Developers Say, In GameFile. I like to leave story to books and movies,' one exec says. So what was the greatest story a video game ever told? A “GTA” game? “Mass Effect”? “Planescape: Torment”? Was the greatest gaming story ever told even a great one? Or should developers not bother trying to tell a great one? At GDC, the answer wasn't clear. But the restlessness was evident. Games don't tell great stories yet, the game makers told me, and maybe they never will.—Mar. 11, 2008 8:00 AM EDT—http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1583092/20080310/id_—0.jhtml

So it is that many gaming experts and insiders don't see any need for story. Sometimes, when the marketing department sees a need for story, they just go ahead and market the game as having story, as they did for Gears of War, as it is far easier to hype than it is to work, think, innovate, and create games with story; just as it is far easier for the Federal Reserve—the world's largest corporation—to print dollars and pay off economists, than it is to actually create anything. Everyone in these proud times as banker envy—the ability to say one thing and do another—to print money out of thin air, stands in direct opposition to classical art, integrity, and soul; and so classical art, integrity, and soul must be destroyed. Now and then the people can be afforded ideals, just as long as those ideals are kept in Middle Earth and Narnia and in ancient Greece in a darkened theater, but those ideals must never be brought off those silver screens and acted on in real life, where 45,000,0000 innocent have been murdered since Roe vs. Wade, and where the money supply has been massively inflated, resulting in the destruction of the single-worker home and the classical family. Both roe vs. Wade and the end of the gold standard occurred in the early seventies, along with the rise of feminism and feminist bureaucracies, which are ideally suited to saying one thing and doing another, transforming rugged entrepreneurship into socialism, and murdering 45,000,000 innocent—a task the Nazis fell far short of. Up until now, no video game allowed one to fight for the gold standard, for sound money, for the right to life, for freedom, for classical ideals, for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—for ideals and idealism—for classical ideals and idealism—for exalted ideals and idealism—for honor, character, and story. But now, the time is here, and such a game will be massively opposed by all the experts and their fiat-Ferrari fanboys, lending to its patentability.

As story has ever been the vessel of the soul, from Shakespeare, to the Bible, to Dante, to Homer; to say that video games do not need story, as so many experts boldly proclaim, is to say they do not need soul. To say that they don't tell great stories yet and maybe never will, means that video games do not have great soul, and just might never. And thus, opportunity abounds. This patent counters the experts' opinions, as well as their hype; for many developers just hype the story in their games, rather than admitting it is lacking. As the primary soul of story is Truth, if one does not appreciate story, then Truth is expendable, and it becomes quite easy to hype storyless, superficial games as deep and profound epics.

The MTV Gamefile article continues:

• • That sounds nice, I told Thompson, but why, as a player, should I care? If playing a game is like being an actor acting out a script, then what's my motivation? How was this different from so many other games with plots just like that?
  • Sam wasn't sure what more he could say to convince me. So we stopped talking about the game's story line and went back to talking about how the game was played. Some would say we went back to talking about what mattered. But what about the stories we get to experience in video games? Are they gripping enough? Do they matter? Are they great? Can they be great?
  • For years I've heard from garners and game developers who relish the stories in “Final Fantasy” games or in the adventures made by Canadian developer BioWare. But at the Game Developers Conference last month, I heard something else. I heard game developers grump about the state of storytelling in video games.
  • I heard Dave Jones, president of development studio Real Time Worlds and one of the original architects of the “Grand Theft Auto” series, telling an audience: “I like to leave story to books and movies.”—http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1583092/20080310/id_—0.jhtml

So there you have it—the original architect of GTA states that story ought be left to books and movies. A statement which makes the fanboy response to a young letter writer in EGM even more hilarious. Let's revisit this letter:

EGM Letter of The Month

• • As I grew up, videogames grew up with me. I started playing games like Donkey Kong and Carnival on the ColecoVision before I could read, and Nintendo's MArio title were a staple of my early childhood. As I got older, I saw the storytlines and gameplay mechanics become more intricate and engaging. When I went through my rebellious and bitchy teenage years, so did videogames. And as I grew and matured, so did the subject matter of the games themselves.
  • Now that I'm 22, more things are vying for my time and attention such as work, college, women, drinking, and lamenting over my long-gone and simpler childhood. Needless to say, if I'm going to devote 20-plus hours of my life to completing a game, it had better be well worth it. And to me personally, a game well worth it is one I can take something away from on an intellectual level. For example, a game that makes me question my own existence, or the war in Iraq, or the increasing diconnectedness of our modern high-tech lives would be the holy grail of gaming to me. What are the chances that gaming will finally grow once more and develop a social and political conscience?—Eric Staskiewicz
  • EGM answers: “The answers are pretty damn good. Games are more and more frequently making “statements” about society and politics—see BioShock, GTA4, even Army of Two for just a few examples. We'll always have mindless diversions as well, of course, but count on seeing more and more depth of theme and storytelling in the coming years.

It is beautiful and refreshing to witness today's youth longing for profound story. And it is telling to read the response of the experts who edit leading video games magazines. “Pretty damn good” they say regarding the chances that the gaming industry will finally create games with political and social consciences—they are soooo badassss!!!

Taking a cue from the postmodern poetry professors, video games achieve higher art by adding cheesy sex scenes for the fanboys: http://kotaku.com/389548/muzyka-mass-effect-sex-scene-validates-games-as-art:

Muzyka: Mass Effect Sex Scene Validates Games As Art

• • BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka sounded off to CVG recently about the “SeXbox” controversy centered on Mass Effect, calling it an “interesting experience,” and sticking by video games as an art form:
  • It's very tasteful, but it is an emotionally intense scene, and there's a number of similarly emotional scenes in the game, not just romances but across the board—different relationships between characters.
  • I see videogames as an art form, and they're an emergent art form. They're a commercial art form, but they're still art regardless. And the good thing I think is the fact that people are talking about that kind of scene; it had an impact on them.
  • It proves that videogames are an art form and proves that Mass Effect is an innovator in that. It's in some ways leading the way and willing to push the envelope a little bit and actually deliver stuff that's really compelling.

So it is that the debate is officially over—video games are higher art, as proven by a sex scene. And so too is all porn higher art, as all porn contains an element of sex—indeed, a lot of porn contains sex scenes, and sex scenes are higher art in the fanboy's mind. GTA is perhaps the highest form of art, according to the gaming experts, as it contains sex for money, and too, it allows murder to get that money back; just as feminist lit instructors are paid well in fiat dollars to murder the great books and classics and to destroy the moral fabric of society. Both feminism and GTA IV are well-funded by Wall Street bankers, as both cast women in service of mammon—in the service of the corporation and the state, instead of in service to the higher ideals, faith, and the family.

But even one of the most famous and respected game developers in the world, Will Wright, is stating that games yet fall short of art:

• • For his part, Wright is more optimistic. “I do believe that games can be a form of artistic expression,” he said, “a co-collaboration between player and designer. We have yet to prove we can do meaningful things with this form of expression, but I believe we are at the cusp of a Cambrian explosion of possibilities [referencing the geological era in which complex life flourished]. We are a couple years away from being respected as a form of expression, but it's not a battle we need to fight. We'll win anyway.”—http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18935

So it is that the present invention will accomplish what has so far not been accomplished in the realm of video games and gaming, by endowing games with deep, meaningful purpose.

Imagine a video game wherein one was able to fight for ideas, and wherein those ideas had consequences. Imagine a video game which married the dramatic action to the external action, and which allowed Ranger McCoy to battle for both April and Autumn's souls and spirits. Will Wright, like many in the industry, lauds GTA IV and killing civilians:

• • “Games have a language that we learn through playing. We develop a literacy that for many remains subconscious,” he said. “In game design we conceive of rules we can develop that emerge into the widest variety of experience.” This is in contrast to other forms of media in which we create rules for the opposite reason, to limit and force an outcome:—http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18935

What Wright is missing is that games will be exalted to greater heights when the “path to victory becomes narrow,” while the path to debauchery and decline is wide.

• • “Players tell stories,” Wright summarized. “We, designers, provide a platform for player expression.” As examples of player expression layered over game platforms, he mentioned machinima such as “My Trip to Liberty City” and players using The Sims' album feature to create their own narratives.
  • Alluding to the conflict between player experiences and designer-scripted experience, he described his own reactions in Grand Theft Auto IV to killing civilians. “I do feel a bit of remorse if it's my choice,” he said, “but if it's to progress the story, then ‘God told me to do it.’”—http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18935

Again, Wright is missing the emptiness of the current system of video games, as in classical epic stories, neither Zeus nor God commands any of the heroic characters to kill civilians simply to advance a story. Rather, Zeus and the Biblical God are Gods of Justice for beggars and strangers—for the common man. It is the naïve fanboy God who rejoices in killing Civilians and hiring and killing prostitutes, and thus, to date, games lack the sensibility of the higher art that is found in Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, and other classical, epic works, such as Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars.

• • He raised the importance on the part of the designer of compelling the player to explore the depths of broad experiences like The Sims or GTA4, saying such games need “clear alternate goal structures that motivate the player to achieve in a variety of ways. Make players aware of the possibility space.”
  • Gaming's perceived emotional weaknesses relative to film are “misguided”, he said. Games do not have an inferior emotional palate, but “rather a different one”—feelings such as pride, guilt, and accomplishment, which are commonly felt when playing games, are not felt in the viewers of films whose characters might experience those feelings.
  • “The best experiences are generative experiences,” argued Wright, concluding his well-received lecture at Krazy! “The best stories are player stories.”—http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=18935

But games could be far greater, were the sense of accomplishment to derive from a victory based on profound, epic ideas that had consequences such as freedom and liberty, as opposed to a victory based upon killing civilians, jacking cars, and hiring and killing prostitutes. The free marketplace would reflect this, if games were given half a chance, but the snarky, entrenched, pretentious industry is about as open minded to games celebrating the same ideas as do the Great Books and Classics as is Dave Eggers.

• • This month, film director and cultural titan Steven Spielberg will make his highly anticipated debut in the world of video games. The game, Boom Blox, is a modern puzzle game where the player can arrange, knock over and blow up various block formations. Despite its seemingly basic premise, Entertainment Arts, the game company, has invested millions of dollars into the game's development and expects it to be a, well, blockbuster.
  • But many garners are less optimistic.
  • “I know it's going to suck,” Eddo Stern, an independent game developer and professor at Cal Arts University in Los Angeles. “And he's not even going to make it. He's just going to put his name on it because he knows nothing about games.”
  • Most serious game developers and garners fall into the gameplay camp, which focuses on the mechanics of the game and views video games as a toy, not as a story. In their view, it doesn't matter whether the main character is a hedgehog, plumber, super soldier, a unicorn or just a block. How the characters move and the mechanics of the game are much more important.—http://www.star-telegram.com/408/story/653352.html

The bestselling PS2 game of all time is Grand Theft Auto, selling over 25,000,000 copies. In the open-ended game, one is allowed to hire a hooker and then kill her and get one's money back. Not only is that reprehensible, but the game quickly gets boring, as the missions are all performed in a most superficial context of stealing and killing for the sake of stealing and killing. There is no higher purpose—there are no classical ideals being served. One cannot fight for freedom nor the right to life nor the Constitution. It is almost like trying to gain tenure at a postmodern university these days—it's all just a game of high-pixel-count politics, where truth and story have been replaced by spectacle, soul with semblance, and deeper philosophies with superficial groupthink.

The present invention proposes that the service of classic ideals will endow video games with far more meaningful worlds, emotional and spiritual immersion, and engaging gameplay. As Aristotle noted, the subplot and the plot must be unified, and the premise of this invention allows the on-screen action to mirror the deeper dramatic action that takes place in the realm of ideas. All this is done via the moral premise, which was talked about in an earlier invention.

At the crux of this patent is the heart and soul of the libertarian movement which comes to us from both Athens and Jerusalem—from Socrates and Jesus, from Plato, Aristotle, and Moses; and more recently from Jefferson, Hayek, and Mises. To date, nobody has incorporated the nobility of the Greats' ideas, and their eloquent words, in video games, and then pitted those ideas against the likes of Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, King George, tyrants, deconstructionists, and collectivists.

Imagine an investment greater than oil and gold—greater than stocks and real estate. Imagine an investment with infinite returns that rust cannot tarnish and no thief can steal. This book is about that higher form of investing; and opportunity abounds.

Imagine a videogame which let you play as Odysseus, which rewarded you for heroic moral choices; and imagine a film based on the game's technology. Imagine a game which brought the classical poetry to life when you chose the correct dialogue tree; and in which you played for higher stakes—your wife, queen, and love—faithful Penelope. Imagine a game which let you fight for the spirit of the Constitution and artist's rights. Imagine riding into town for that third act, choosing to disguise yourself as a beggar—a man with no name like Clint Eastwood in A Fistful of Dollars—as you observed the imposter kings and managerial capitalists living off other's estates—plundering savings and investments while dividing and destroying families—and you came up with a plan to defeat them. Imagine reuniting the family, rendering Justice, and walking away from the gold at the end—as did Eastwood in Sergio Leone's masterpiece. That would be one rockin' game—it would blow Grand Theft Auto out of the water. Imagine a game which let you play as Dante as you trekked through hell to be with Beatrice . . . and so we begin to see that all action-adventure epics are ultimately love stories. From Braveheart, to 300, to Gladiatior, to The Matrix, to A Fistful of Dollars, to the American Revolution, to the trial and death of Socrates, to the crucifixion of Jesus, the stakes of the showdown are always the same: freedom, morality, the individual, romantic love, the classic family, and Epic Soul facing down the king, tyrant, bureaucratic mob, decline, PR hype, deceit, and the inevitable soul-killing decadence of the corporate/state Matrix. Imagine films, games, and novels which raised the stakes and saluted the battle for the Epic Soul—the very center and circumference of civilization.

Well come ride with us—with Autumn and Ranger—with Adams and Cicero—with Socrates and Jesus. Ride with us on out towards the Renaissance; and I shall teach you how to surf the classics and open source software on toward the infinite wealth found in following your passions and dreams. And too, I shall teach you of the power of the Gold 45 Revolver—the only gun that can prevail in that showdown that's been a long time coming. It's time—it's time for us to head on home and reclaim Penelope and our homes—our faith and family—our love, our queens, and our wives—from the fiatocracy's false suitors.

Sergio Leone's epic classic A Fistful of Dollars is not about money. It is not about the gold that the gangs lust after throughout the film. It is ultimately about that higher, heroic wealth—Justice. And such movies and their classic heroes have as of late been banned, as the classical heroic soul has been deconstructed, dumbed-down, and feminized throughout society; as deprived of the spirit's abstract, exalted principles, people will become slaves to the mere material, while yet believing themselves to be free. That is the genius of The Matrix's ironic decline. Student debt, as all debt, is sold as that which liberates one with lux et veritas, whereas in reality it but funds the dumbed-down Matrix, which the student serf is then indebted to serve. And so upon graduation the student goes to work for the banks who printed the money from thin air; as they buy up the foreclosed homes. It soon becomes every lawyer and MBA's goal to sit close to and serve not the creators of art, wealth, and exaltation, but the creators of debt, debauchery, and decline. I need no footnote to reference the decline—look up and down your street—look at the culture, the family, the university, the state, and the corporation, and if you cannot see it for yourself, then you are blind to external reality, and perhaps the time has finally come to examine your own disappearing soul—as a man with a shortened measuring stick or debauched context might conclude that the contemporary spirit is as grand as it ever was. Again—that is the symbiotic genius of ironic decline—those who are in it cannot see it. But those who read the Great Books and Classics and see their soul's forgotten ideals exalted in words—they must be banned from the university campus, and their Great Books class must be replaced with marketing, feminist literature, and other mild forms of entertainment the fiatocracy approves of.

In Fistful, The Man With No Name rides into town on a mule; and after he reunites the family—Madonna and child and the husband and wife; he plays the corrupt, warring, corporate gangs off one-another. The Roho gang destroys the Baxter gang, and the lone Man With No Name finally returns to defeat the Roho gang and their rifles with his 45 Revolver in the final showdown, and he claims the gold for himself. And in the last scene, he rides off on the same mule, leaving the gold behind.

The film launched Eastwood to international stardom and was the first in The Man With No Name Trilogy, which concluded with The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Now imagine a video game which allowed the player to battle the corporate gangs that are separating women from their children, to reunite the family, and to deliver justice to the Matrix. Such games shall be the reward of the renaissance, along with film renditions of The Odyssey that use video game technology to bring the moral heroism to life.

The Odyssey—once the center and circumference of education, has been banned. Few students will ever read it, unless they read it to deconstruct and destroy it. It has been banned as it is a classic western exalting the heroic soul, and fiat-funded societies (fiatocracies) have no need for heroes, but for those fighting their wars on far-off foreign shores. Odysseus shows up back home as The Man With No Name, and he is kicked around and spat on by the suitors living in his home, eating away at his estate, much like the media and movies such as Stop Loss kicks the soldiers around—those very same soldiers who defend their freedom of speech and the Constitution. But Odysseus alone can string the bow, and he, his son, and friends—the few—stand against the many and kill the suitors. After the suitor's blood has stained the halls of his home, he has all their whores clean up the mess. And when they are done, he tells his son to take them outside and hang them. Grand Theft Auto—the bestselling video game of all time—allows one to hire and kill prostitutes, but it does not allow one to clean house of the managerial capitalists and reunite the family that their Matrix has destroyed. And thus opportunities abound for patents for exalted video games with moral game engines, as well as games that allow the player to battle lawyers who state that artists rights and patents on novel, enhanced, superior methods for creating video games are unconstitutional, while abortion and the inflationary tax are constitutional. Fiatocracies, replete with printing presses, rifles and lawyers who oppose the Constitution, have infinite funds to finance mediocrities who have found it easier to gain wealth, honors, titles, tenures, and award via fiat, as opposed to the quaint, old-fashioned ways of rugged innovation, work, and the creation of art and righteous poetry. And as the true creator is always outnumbered by the downloader, and few are opposed to free money at someone else's expense, especially their children's, fiatocracies blossom in democractic republics, as they destroy the family, the Constitution, and the soul—all those entities and forms of higher wealth which fiat currencies have no power to create nor exalt, but only to undermine and destroy.

When Moses came down off that mountain for the first time with those Ten Commandments, he found his people worshipping the golden calf, and he smashed the Ten Commandments upon the ground, reasoning that the people were not deserving of the higher wealth of God's Law. Early on in The Iliad, Achilles throws down the golden staff that granted him to the right to speak in the Greek assemblies; and he calls out the drunken bureaucrats, who never fight on the front lines, but only ever linger in the back; and hand one-another honors and awards earned by the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of the men fighting and dying on the front lines for higher ideals.

And make no mistake—we're riding for the front lines of Western Civilization, where we shall return society to sound money, and escape the postmodern decline that transforms capitalism into cronyism via fiat, that privatizes the profits and socializes the risk, that praises a free market in public, but socializes it in private, by socializing the currency along with everything it buys—the entire market. What some men must labor for, others just print, thusly infinitely devaluing the former's honor, character, integrity, and soul. So of course they have to send legions of feminist instructors and soulless MBAs to deconstruct honor, integrity, and soul upon the college campuses, and year, after year, after year—for three years in a row in this era of 2008 AD—they have tried to cancel my class and prevent Homer, Bogle, Shakespeare, Dante, and the Bible from being taught in a business class. But such things were prophesized long ago, and just as there were three days of the chase in Moby Dick, whereupon Captain Ahab finally went down on that third day; so too shall this class be made immortal upon the third time they shoot to kill it.

Look closely at what the soul-killing system has done to our men and women—their inability to speak truth, the 50% divorce rate, the transformation of every covenant into a mere contract, record numbers of abortions, the largest government ever known to mankind with the largest debt in the history of the world, which sends the best to die on foreign shores for a Constitution that is ignored, deconstructed, and spat on in its own home, as if it were Odysseus himself.

• • The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Shot for less than $200,000, A Fistful of Dollars broke Clint Eastwood as an international star. The budget was so sparse that Clint had to bring his own gun, hat, and boots that he'd used on the TV show Rawhide.

And that Justice shall thunder down again, like Zeus's lightning bolts. You can bet against it all you want; and invest in reality TV and sub-prime scandals; but the immortal soul longs for classical immortality—it longs to be free to ride with the ghosts of eternity. I've seen it in the faces of my freshmen, and though the boomer administrators have yet to read a single word I ever wrote, these words shall far outlast their tenures, which are naught but massive student debt embodied in ego, summers off, and convertible BMWs.

Imagine video games that allowed one to match word and deed—which exalted honor and integrity. Once upon a time the mark of man was matching word and deed, but now it is profiting by saying one thing and doing another, as that is far more profitable for Wall Street Bankers and university administrators who never create anything but fiat debt and wealth-transferring bureaucracy. That is what they teach in the feminized law schools, which ignore the classical context the Founding Fathers held dear, and instead turn to arbitrary case studies, where they can find abortion, gay marriage, and no-fault divorce in the Constitution—all of which benefit the materialistic Matrix in the short-term. Once upon a time it was a mark of a man—from Moses and Odysseus on down—to honor the family; but today college administrators place young women in fantastic debt, while declaring Prima Noctae on them. “If we can't get men of Character out, we'll breed them out,” said the King in Braveheart.

Although fiat currency systems must ultimately evolve to support postmodern, socialistic pretensions that oppose classical honor, the individual, integrity, and soul; there is something about the immortal soul that calls all bluffs on that final day. All the material wealth obtained by hype, deceit, and growing bureaucracies to tax and plunder the common worker fades to naught; and our hero, who was cut down, tortured, and exiled by the lesser mediocrities, is resurrected. This epic story, based on the classic hero's journey, is worth far more than gold. And it is yours for the taking—all you must do is embrace your higher ideals and the better angels of your soul.

Classic writers ultimately run Hollywood. Shakespeare is the most produced screenwriter of all time; and he has created far more wealth than everyone who has ever worked on Wall Street combined. Producers will tell you that movies are star-driven, or director-driven, but they are story driven. And that is why Hollywood's greatest hits are all centered about epic story's moral premise—from A Fistful of Dollars, to The Matrix, Braveheart, to The Lord of The Rings, to the upcoming Homer's Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, and Autumn Rangers.

The Odyssey opens with the vile, drunken suitors insisting that Odysseus is dead and gone and never coming back, as they and their whores live off his estate while trying to seduce Odysseus's love, queen, and his wife—Penelope. Well, imagine a video game where the girl's character acted like Penelope—resisting the suitor's efforts. Imagine a game that endowed the pixels with classical soul, and wherein ideas and actions had consequences. Saddle up now, for that's where we're riding—to the renaissance. For all enduring wealth comes not from money, but from virtue, as Socrates stated:

• • I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.—Socrates, The Apology

Like Achilles, Socrates is not afraid of death. You can stand him up at the gates of hell, but he won't back down. And all the fanboys and video game experts can mock the classics—Shakespeare and Homer—all they want, while hiring and killing prostitutes; for that opens up vast opportunities for video games in which the character can exalt and save a woman's soul via word; while killing their pimp via deed.

Video games came of age in an era where the Classic, Exalted Western was being deconstructed, rejected, and banned. Video games came of age in an era where the Great American Novel was demolished, replaced by postmodern politics and propaganda, porn, myspace bands, and government bureaucracy. John Wayne, Sergio Leone, and the Man with no Name were replaced by Deadwood—a plotless, pointless, profane joke that projected the heart and soul of amoral Hollywood hipsters on the Old West, and was eventually canceled. This present invention proposes a video game in which one can revive the classic Western, by shooting the Hollywood Hipsters, sipping their Starbucks and high-fiving each-other each time they slip the F word into their storyless script. The First Person Shooter or Third Person Shooter will allow high-level in-game characters to take flamethrowers to entire studios, burning the marketing and creative departments in a most efficient manner. If they fail to do so, Hollywood will decline in a sea of soulless remakes, after remakes, after remakes.

Make no mistake—living Epic Story has been banned in our era—by the MFAs and MBAs alike, who cannot afford Honor, nor truth in their fiatocracies, and this invention will allow players to bring Epic Story back in video games. The Great American Novel and Living, Epic Narrative has been replaced with Paris Hilton, Grand Theft Auto, fleeting gossip, and spectacle-driven movies financed by spectacle-driven Wall Street bankers, who wholeheartedly support the destruction of truth, family, art, the Great Books and Classics, and the poets, as the Higher Ideals get in the way of their god—the Bottom Line. And they seek to rope all of entirety to their bottom line, killing the soul and spirit on all levels, replacing covenants with contracts, and dragging all of entirety down, down, down to the depths of their bottom line. The present game allows the indie hero to battle the deceivers, demons, and decliners, save the souls of the Beatrices and Penelopes of our generation from the liberal psychiatrists and media mavens that prescribe and encourage drugs, promiscuity, debauchery, and divorce, and thus save the world.

When Shakespeare wrote “first, let's kill all the lawyers,” he had not yet met an economist. The following institutions and industries are in decline: the music industry, Hollywood, marriage, the university, government, and Wall Street. Many say that cultural decline is being lead by video game violence, but this patent argues that video games are not nearly violent enough. Where bestselling video games allow one to hire innocent hookers and shoot them, they don't allow you to kill their pimps nor all the lawyers who are killing the Constitution and the music and entertainment industry by deconstructing God, exiling fundamental rights granted by our Creator, and replacing the likes of Johnny cash, Pink Floyd, and Bob Dylan with youtube, myspace bands, degraded rap, and Simon Cowell—all of which are owned by the Wall Street wealth-transferrers. Imagine a first person shooter that presented the player with a choice—Simon Cowell, skyrocketing divorce, rap, and myspace bands, or the Abbey Road and Dark Side of The Moon. If one shoots the wrong people, while letting the pomo-hipster professors and lawyers live, the in-game world will transform into Hell, filled with abortion and broken borders to make up for all the aborted, myspace bands working for Rupert Murdoch, as Larry Lessig deconstructs the artist's natural rights to digital rights management. Many of Larry's books are released under a creative commons license, and it would be fun to mash-up his book in the gameworld, as a bespectacled king of the fanboys tries to hide how much money is flowing his way from the major Wall Street corporations that profit from the decline in the artist's rights, so that ads can be slapped on every form of media, and so that the artist to consumer model is forever broken, so that artists have no value on their own, but only when they are bundled together by big brother and sold for $1.6 billion, as was youtube. The bespectacled in-game character would say things such as:

• • We should be building a DRM-free world. We should have laws that encouraged a DRM-free world. We should demonstrate practices that make compelling a DRM-free world.—http://lessig.org/blog/2006/03/opendrm.html

And as youtube and google rake in billions in Larry's DRM-free world (no drm for artists—only for healthcare companies and banks and Steve Jobs), while artists are denied their Natural Rights to protect and profit from their content, the music industry and culture continue to decline, as mom-and-pop record shops close up shop, indie bands struggle, stress out, and starve, and a massive transfer of wealth, from the vast and natural riches inherent in the indie-artists creations, to massive Wall Street corporations, which do not create wealth so much as they aggregate it, copy it, and transfer it, and Larry's foundations occurs.

It's not porno hipster lawyers alone who killed music—that would be giving them too much credit. It's also the pomo-hipsters who aren't musicians. For by killing God, they killed love, and by killing love, they killed love songs, and by killing love songs, they killed the reason to write music. Make no mistake, the renaissance will bring it all on back, but not before the pomo-hipster boomers drag the last vestige of heaven on down along with their sinking ship.

• • Rolling Stone reports: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/15137581/the_record_industrys_decline/print
  • Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far—and that's after seven years of near-constant erosion. In the face of widespread piracy, consumers' growing preference for low-profit-margin digital singles over albums, and other woes, the record business has plunged into a historic decline.
  • The major labels are struggling to reinvent their business models, even as some wonder whether it's too late. “The record business is over,” says music attorney Peter Paterno, who represents Metallica and Dr. Dre. “The labels have wonderful assets—they just can't make any money off them.” One senior music-industry source who requested anonymity went further: “Here we have a business that's dying. There won't be any major labels pretty soon.”
  • In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 785.1 million albums; last year, they bought 588.2 million (a figure that includes both CDs and downloaded albums), according to Nielsen SoundScan. In 2000, the ten top-selling albums in the U.S. sold a combined 60 million copies; in 2006, the top ten sold just 25 million. Digital sales are growing—fans bought 582 million digital singles last year, up sixty-five percent from 2005, and purchased $600 million worth of ringtones—but the new revenue sources aren't making up for the shortfall.
  • More than 5,000 record-company employees have been laid off since 2000. The number of major labels dropped from five to four when Sony Music Entertainment and BMG Entertainment merged in 2004—and two of the remaining companies, EMI and Warner, have flirted with their own merger for years.
  • About 2,700 record stores have closed across the country since 2003, according to the research group Almighty Institute of Music Retail. Last year the eighty-nine-store Tower Records chain, which represented 2.5 percent of overall retail sales, went out of business, and Musicland, which operated more than 800 stores under the Sam Goody brand, among others, filed for bankruptcy. Around sixty-five percent of all music sales now take place in big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy, which carry fewer titles than specialty stores and put less effort behind promoting new artists.

Imagine the glory of the First Person Shooter (FPS) that could save the recording industry—that could revive the record store—the Tom Petty's and Pink Floyds and Beatles—that liberated the artist from the pomo-hipster groupthink lawyers and their fleet of fanboys.

Why do techies so detest the arts and artists? Why do they detest digital rights management? Why do lawyers so detest Epic Story? It is because it gets in the way of their profits and egos. For the true source of Law comes from Epic Story—from Homer, Shakespeare, and the Bible—and by deconstructing the epic myths, they have inspired the billion-dollar divorce industry and the myriad of Wall Street scandals.

Epic Story in the Bible bypasses all the lawyers and simply declares “thou shalt not steal,” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Where are the profits in that? Lawyers have transformed divorce into a multi-billion dollar industry, and youtube, which provides no DRM, paid the aggregators and their lawyers over $1.6 billion, while paying the artists very little. The corporate forces detest DRM as it allows artists to serve consumers directly, preventing the corporate hipsters from slapping their advertising on it, or aggregating it in vast social networks in which each artist is robbed of their value—a value which soon adds up to $1.6 billion. Not only does the banishment of digital rights management enrich the pomo-hipster lawyers, but it also allows them to kill the culture by defunding the geese that lay the golden eggs—the artists. Thus instead of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, we get myspace bands. And finally, Larry gets to be the rock star at his Creative Commons festivals, which are funded by foundations and powerful Wall Street aggregators and transferrers of wealth-those who transfer the wealth of the artist from the artist to the lawyer, administrator, and aggregator. It all plays out like Grand Theft Auto—Wall Street's bestselling game. MBAs just walk around, taking whatever they want for themselves, funded by fiat bubble after fiat bubble after fiat bubble.

George Lucas speaks out against pomo-hipsterism in both forms—both the pomo-hipsters who oppose digital rights management, and the pomo-hipsters who celebrate youtube.

Postmodernism is a vast profit center on all fronts, and it fits nicely in the University—whether a student wishes to expand the government or work for a corrupt corporation, postmodernism is an excellent major. And in order to major in postmodernism, all that anyone has to do is show up. It is the only class that is offered. Whether you are studying String Theory, feminist studies, or marketing, you are studying postmodernism. If a professor steps forth to teach a course based upon the Great Books and classics, they will be “hung out to dry,” as a law professor told me, who later hung me out to dry. The genius of this video game is that it would allow the righteous professor to ride back into town, after getting kicked, beaten, and hung, and would allow them to render Justice. The result would be a declining divorce and debauchery rate, the end to fiat-funded Wall Street scandals as business-as-usual, a Great Books renaissance, and movies, novels, and video games that brought Epic Story to life.

The only problem with postmodernism as a profit center is that it places all of entirety into debt—a vast cultural debt. Government bureaucrats and pomo-hipster economists routinely celebrate how there has been no inflation. Well, if that is so, why have house prices tripled or quadrupled in the past few years? And why have home prices skyrocketed? For once upon a time, a man could afford a home on a simple salary—a home being defined as a wife and children, as they were in The Odyssey and The Bible. But these days, with the skyrocketing divorce rate, and the skyrocketing tax rate, and the skyrocketing abortion rate, it gets harder and harder to afford a home, let alone a house, or even the bastard children that are so in vogue now. Make no mistake—there has been vast inflation—and the number-crunching bean counters have been telling lies. The glory of this video game is that it would allow one to take a flamethrower to the lying beancounters, liberate women from corporate whoring, and allow children to grow up in intact homes. You lie, you get shot in this game—just like in A Fistful of Dollars.

By killing the culture, the postmodern elite have profited immensely via irony, and they get to sip champagne and drive BMWs to their faculty meetings, and pontificate about pontifications. In all their ironic bumbling and prosperity, they have grown blind to the dearth of Truth and God and Beauty that has come to pervade the collapsing world, and this video game would allow the player to make sure that children again have parents, that daughters and sons again get to grow up with fathers.

Rolling Stone writes,

• • So who killed the record industry as we knew it? “The record companies have created this situation themselves,” says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which operates Virgin Megastores. While there are factors outside of the labels' control—from the rise of the Internet to the popularity of video games and DVDs—many in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels' failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. “They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster—that was the moment that the labels killed themselves,” says Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of management company the Firm. “The record business had an unbelievable opportunity there. They were all using the same service. It was as if everybody was listening to the same radio station. Then Napster shut down, and all those 30 or 40 million people went to other [file-sharing services].”

The problem was actually much deeper, for as God and Romance is replaced by cynicism and theft, working with Napster wasn't going to fix it. It would have been like The Man with no Name working with the Baxters in the opening scene, instead of shooting them. Napster could have come up with a DRM system back then, but they chose not to, as DRM wasn't cool. MTV honored them, but then MTV killed music, replacing the Soul with degradation and debauchery, as is Viacom's specialty.

The glory of this present game is that it would allow the player to run through the halls of massive corporations, filled with double-speaking, uncreative lawyers and bureaucrats planning the next marketing campaign for the filth that will further the family's decline and chackle women to their bottom line. He game would allow the player to take them out. The actions would come to life as manufactured gangsta rap was replaced with melody and music, youngsters again looked into one-anothers' eyes with hope of eternal romance, and cynicism and irony were destroyed by player's the flamethrowing chainsaw.

If the player fails, the consequences are enormous. Millions are aborted, the masses are forced to become wage slaves for money that the other class just prints, which is no longer backed by gold, but only by debt. So the harder they work, and the more money they make, the more iou notes they get, and the deeper in debt they are. Now some critics might say that war and violence directed by purpose and reason are bad things, and that video games should only ever allow us to engage in gratuitous violence-to kill prostitutes and innocent commuters and jack their cars. But John Stuart Mill reminds us:

• • War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.—John Stuart Mill

This game allows the indie artist to battle postmodern lawyers such as Larry Lessig who seek to deny them DRM, and transfer all their natural wealth to vast, billion-dollar corporations. If one does not “kill the lawyers,” as Shakespeare suggests, the music industry is destroyed, and in-game music of the Beatles and Pink Floyd are replaced by Myspace Bands and Simon Cowell, who exists not for music, but for Fox and Rupert Murdoch, just as Larry exists not for the indie artist—which every true artist is—but for Google. In his book The Cult of The Amateur, How today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, Andrew Keen writes,

• • To quote Richard Edeleman, the founder, president, and CEO of Edelman PR, the world's largest privately owned public relations company: In this era of exploding media technologies there is no truth except the truth you create for yourself . . . .
  • The Judeo-Christian ethic of respecting others' property that has been central to our society since the country's founding is being tossed into the delete file of our desktop computers. The pasting, remixing, mashing, borrowing, copying—the stealing—of intellectual property has become the single most pervasive activity on the Internet. And it is reshaping and distorting our values and our very culture. The breadth of today's mass kleptocracy is mind-boggling. I'm not referring only to the $20 billion pilfered and pickpocketed, day by day, from the music industry or the $2.3 billion and growing from the movie industry. Sadly, the illegal downloading of music and movies has become so commonplace, so ordinary, that even the most law-abiding among us, like Brianna LaHara, now do it without thinking. “How are we supposed to know it's illegal?” asks a bookkeeper in Redwood city, Calif., as he copied a playlist of songs to give out a party.”—p. 142

Postmodern lawyers sell out the Judeo Christian Ethic—they hate Johnny Cash, the Beatles, and the Bible all the same, because of the fundamental, soulless premise the pomo-hipster lawyers harbor deep in their souls—they detest the Individual and the Soul, Truth for Truth's sake, and instead prefer the adulation of their fanboys and the corporate pennies that the aggregator capitalists make off the backs of the artists and creators, and toss their way. Postmodernism is a most profitable occupation for lawyers, as it allows them to trump the Truth. It allows them to trump the classical, Judeo-Christian Truth—the Truth which sets us free, and it thus allows them to enslave us to their bottom line. As collectivists, they earn their living by diminishing the individual's rights. They readily sell their shallow souls for the few pennies the corporations toss their way, funding their postmodern law centers that are built in the same spirit by which the firefighters in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 burned the books, as opposed to saving them. This game shall allow the flamethrowers to be turned on the postmodern pedants and lawyers, instead of the Great Books and Classics. And as life imitates art, this game shall achieve higher art. Andrew Keen continues,

• • A June 2005 study by the Center for Academic Integrity (CAI) of 50,000 undergraduates revealed that 70 percent of college students admitted to engaging in some form of cheating; worse still, 77 percent of college students didn't think that Internet plagiarism was a “serious” issue.

Having deconstructed the Great Books and Classics, the foremost goal of the university is to place students into massive debt while teaching them that there is no truth but for the truth of the CEOs they will become wage-slaves to when they graduate. By rewarding slackers and debtors with grade and currency-inflation, the postmodern professors prepare them for a life serving Wall Street's fiat-funded bubbles/scandals and the destruction of the deeper American soul. The future lawyers will find loopholes to rape the artists and workers, and they will be trained to see abortion in the United States constitution, and the doctors will be sent forth to carry out millions more abortions, and when the soul declines in the wake of the destruction of epic storytelling, the doctors and health care companies will become further enriched, prescribing the drugs that enrich the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and further create a dependent class. The myth that fathers are evil and the traditional family will be perpetuated at all levels, as women are torn from the home, children are torn from their wombs, truth is torn from the soul, and before one knows it, over forty million innocent children have been aborted, illegal aliens have been imported to replace them, the traditional household is found to be in the minority, and crassness and perversions rule the world, along with the Lessigs and their prideful fanboys, who believe themselves to have won by denying property rights to the indie artist, creator, and inventor—the natural fount of all wealth.

• • If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.—Ludwig Von Mises
  • The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.—Fredrich August von Hayek, Nobel Laureate in Economics
  • The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.—John Adams

Instead of killing innocent drivers and prostitutes and jacking cars, the present invention allows the in-game player to kill the drug-prescribing psychiatrists, the taxing-and-spending government/corporate bureaucrats who cross from one realm to the other as easy as a lawyer crosses from corruption to perversion. Upon hearing doublespeakers say things such as “Freedom is slavery,” “war is peace,” “government is freedom,” and “fiat currency is superior to the gold standard,” the in-game player will be allowed to shoot them. And too, for the first time in the history of video gaming, this game will allow the protagonist to shoot those who rap crass hiphop lyrics, thusly saving their young daughters from a world of soul-destroying over-sexulaization. Now many conservatives will criticize the over-sexulaization of society and the decline of morals, but when it comes right down to it, they will favor killing prostitutes and jacking cars over funding or creating games that actually allows one to fight for ideas. This is because they are fiat conservatives; and like the vampires and zombies in the present invention, they are content to say one thing while doing another; and to write lofty articles while never manning up and taking action to actually change anything. To them real-life abortion is far better than video games with ideals.

The great thing about this game is that the player is free to choose the world they live in—in one world they get The Beatles and Pink Floyd—they get Shakespeare and Dante. They get intact, traditional, exalted, classical families that stay together and their daughters grow up wholesome and find loving, caring husbands. In the other world, their daughters suffer STDs, pregnancies, and abortions, and eventually become husbandless, man-hating feminists as so many women are trained to be these days, slaving away for the fiatocracy's corporations, rendered forever unmarriagable, except for by suckers who the family law courts and divorce regime will eventually plunder, pillage, and enslave.

While myspace and facebook are great in aggregating pageviews, displaying young women in underwear, transforming art into a commodity, and never paying the artist, nor creator, nor networker; they have done little to advance exalted culture. While they make billions for the technocrats and aggregators, they are powerless in the realm of the immortal soul, where art created by the individual stands alone.

This game will be a vast and marked improvement over the current art which allows one to only ever shoot meaningless monsters, superficial villains, innocent prostitutes, and law-abiding citizens going about their daily lives. A game that allows the character to fight for Culture, Nobility, Truth, and Beauty will offer a far-superior gameplay environment. Andrew Keen writes,

• • My own “God is Dead” moment came in late 2005. I was talking with Alan Parsons, the legendary record producer best known for engineering the Beatles 1969 album Abbey Road and Pink Floyd's album Dark Side of The Moon.
  • Both albums are huge economic successes. As of 2004, sales of Dark Side of The Moon were at over forty million units, making it the twentieth-bestselling album in history. And Abbey Road, with its iconic cover photograph of the Beatles crossing North London street, is the forty-sixth-bestselling album of all time, and has gone platinum fifteen times.
  • Abbey Road and Dark Side of The Moon represent the Apotheosis of the mass media economy that shaped the twentieth century. These albums made mass cultural, political, and social statements that may never again be repeated. And they made money, too. In 2002, Dark Side of The Moon was still selling 400,000 copies, making it the 200^th-bestselling album of the year, almost thirty years after its initial release . . . .
  • . . . “Where is the Money?” was the question I asked everyone at Media Business 5 (MB5).
  • In addition to Parsons, MB5 alumni included Jonathan Taplin, the Hollywood insider who produced Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets; Frank Casanova, head of Streaming Media at Apple; Chuck D of Public Enemy and the first serious rap artist; Chris Schroeder, then-CEO of the online Washington Post; Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com, and many other leading figures in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
  • When I spoke to Parsons in 2006, he announced the end of the record business as we know it. My original question at MB5—Where is the money?—still couldn't be answered. By 2005, Parsons had concluded it would never be answered. The record business was dying. The party had come to an end.
  • “Are you sad?” I asked him.
  • “It's very sad, yes,” he said. “But I'm glad I've lived through the—what's the word—the glorious years.”
  • There might be money to be made by linking music to advertisements, or other content to the sale of condoms or cappuccino. But the glory days of selling epoch-making albums like Abbey Road are over.
  • Today, the lyrics from a song like “Money” on Dark side of the Moon reverberate with a strange irony. In a way they describe Parsons' “glorious years”—the dying gasps of mass media when an album sold forty million in record stores like Tower, and thievery was limited to small-scale, in-store shoplifting rather than an industry-destroying, paradigm-shifting dismantling of 200 years of intellectual property law. As the biggest record store in the world closes its illustrious doors on the corner of Bay and Columbus, we say good-bye to one of the most venerated culture industries of modern times.—Andre Keen, The Cult of The Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture

The glory of the present invention is that it will allow the player to save culture. Armed with a flamethrowing machine-gun with a massive chainsaw, the player will be able to go after pirates—both the lawyers for the major labels and technology companies, as well as those hiding in their mom's basements. This invention runs counter to the expert's opinions, as Larry Lessig's opinion of himself is vast. This invention is non-obvious, as while fanboys and game-designers are quick to celebrate hiring hookers and then shooting them to get their money back, they are somewhat blind to Epic Story and Higher Culture, having never had fathers nor teachers who introduced them to the Great Books and Classics—to Shakespeare and Dante, to Homer and the Bible.

If the player fails to kill the postmodern lawyers, who they shall be able to discern by their doublespeak and the massive amounts of cash that flows their way from government and corporate bureaucracies, the culture shall be lost. They shall see their firstborn aborted, and their second born shall become a debt-laden, tattooed, depressed wage slave like all the girls described in Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex Delay Love, and Lose at Both, I Am Charlotte Simmons, and Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student. If the player fails to kill the postmodern lawyers, professors, and psychiatrists—if they fail to nip the problem in the bud, they will then have to battle postmodern politicians and truthless bureaucrats leading Wall Street scams with Government grants. If they fail there, their child will be aborted, or, if born, will grow up in a fatherless world of hiphop thuggery, Deadwood profanity and degraded, pomo-hipster Hollywood crap replacing the supreme artistry of John Wayne and the Man with No Name, ever-augmenting government, predatory lending, profit-driven healthcare companies that promote and enrich those who value the bottom line over life and health, and American Idol and Fox instead of the Beatles and Pink Floyd—groupthink over truth, mysticism over reason, tyranny over freedom, and the corrupt bureaucracy over the righteous individual.

The decline of Hollywood and the Music Industry reaches far deeper than what Andrew Keen speaks of. Web 2.0 is not a culprit—it is but an indifferent, amoral player, like your typical law school graduate or MBA. It is easily corrupted, but that is because of the institutionalized hatred of the Classical Judeo Christian context.

Whether you're reading The Declaration of Independence or The Constitution, listening to a Johnny Cash song, watching a John Wayne movie, or enjoying a Sergio Leone classic such as A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; you're witnessing the glories of the Classical Judeo Christian Heritage. When you're listening to Larry Lessig drone on and on about the end of creators' rights, sitting in your feminist-studies class, reading about the justification of the latest Wall Street Scandal as lies are just the way business gets done, or falling asleep while watching Brokeback Mountain on a date with some chick who hates marriage and loves abortion, you're witnessing that which lies in the wake of the postmodern deconstruction and wholesale destruction of the Classical, Judeo-Christian soul. The glory and novelty of the present invention is that it allows one to end Wall Street scandals and abortion with the same weapon—a flame-throwing machine-gun with a chainsaw.

In a chapter titled How Good and Evil Became Irrelevant. The Other Gods We Worship in the book Think a Second Time, Dennis Prager enumerates the entities that postmodern hipsters have mistakenly placed before God. The book is a bit dated, and thus Prager leaves out Web 2.0, pornography, WoW, and Simon Cowell, but he does mention Art, Education, Law, Love, Reason, Blood and Nationalism, Life, Religion and Faith in God, Profits and Success, Psychology, Progress, and Literacy. While Dennis is well-meaning, the fact remains that like so many of his contemporaries, he has presided over a time of decline. The novel aspects of the present invention is that it will allow the player to take up arms against a sea of trouble, and by opposing them, end them. Even though the player might be doomed, the present invention allows him, like King Leonidas, to see that before this game is over, a King-God will bleed, and the world will know that few stood against many in a battle for reason, logic, and freedom over mysticism and tyranny—over postmodernism, abortion, government-growth, perversities, and soulless, meaningless art.

Too many game designers, and Hollywood Directors, treat Story as an afterthought. They begin with the “property”—the style—and then hire a committee of talentless sellouts, who never care when the baby is cut in half—to pen the lackluster scripts that result not only the decline of the boxoffice, but civilization. Thus we do not know nor care who wrote the last Fantastic Four Movie, nor video game, nor Superman, nor Batman. The present invention will allow the writer to receive top-billing, as did Shakespeare and Dante, and thus the producers will violently oppose the present invention, as the postmodernist detests truth, and thus must also detest its natural vessel—Epic Story—and its source—Epic Storytellers. The present invention will allow the indie writer to storm into movie-production factories, leave the crew untouched, and mow down the upper-level MBA management and team of MFA consultants with an Uzi. If the player fails to do so, culture will decline and their children will grow up in a demented world where they are taught that lies and hype are natural and legal on Wall Street, for as Aristotle said, “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence.”

The Hero's Journey is not something that can be tagged on as an afterthought, but rather it can only truly come to life as a result of observing the unifying Moral Premise. Great narratives such as Dante's Inferno, Hamlet, The Bible, The Matrix, Star Wars, Braveheart, Lord of The Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and The Apology all realized this. Because video games came of age in the postmodern era wherein it is unhip to have morality or profess a moral center, video games are incapable of Epic Story, and thus dramatic action, deeper story, and exalted, everlasting art. For it is not Michelangelo's paintings that grant the Bible its story, but it is the moral premise of the Bible—of the one, enduring, just God—that grants Michelangelo's paintings a soul.

The exalted video game described in the present invention could take place in multiple eras, with one possible embodiment being the present era, wherein characters controlled by Al would speak lines informed by philosophers of yore, quoting Hayek, Plato, and Socrates, or Marx, Engels, and Lenin. A player could show up at Socrates' trial, and shoot the assembly that sentences Socrates to death, or take a flamethrower to the corrupt council, thusly rescuing Socrates. A player could traverse the nine levels of Dante's Inferno, and shoot the demons, liberating the sinners from their sin.

The player would get to choose who and who not to shoot based upon the spoken word, and they would then see the game world evolve accordingly. If one fails to shoot the postmodern feminists and liberals who say things like “abortion is good, truth does not exist,” women will be forced into a life of servitude, slaving away for boomer-bolstering corporate corruption after their children are ripped from their wombs, millions of children will be aborted, and the aging boomers will import illegal aliens to do the work that their own murdered citizenry is unable to perform. Government will grow, freedom will be limited, and the in-game player will be outnumbered on all sides, as the culture is corrupted, and the postmodern mob, raised on myspace and youtube instead of Epic Westerns, will kill the player for speaking truths. Such a video game will offer far superior gameplay over the current state of the art, which roots its entertainment in the murder of innocent prostitutes and pedestrians, the random and brutal theft of cars, and bloody, pointless, high-pixel-count massacres in famous Cathedrals.

While war games often allow one to battle enemies wearing the uniforms of communists, terrorists, and Nazis, rarely do video games allow one to gain a sense of the ideologies that drive those in-game characters. Thus video games lack emotional depth and a deeper dramatic reality. A game which allowed insight into the characters' belief systems would afford a far-greater opportunity for classical storytelling and exalted narrative, resulting in more immersive games. Such games would be both more subtle and more engaging, just as our favorite action movies are those that wed the massive battle scenes to subtle and elegant motivations. Braveheart was a “poet warrior,” and games must gain poetry—that immortal art form that is rooted in the word.

On June 13th, Tony Blair addressed Parliament, where regarding the game The Fall of Man, he stated,

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1929072.ece

• • Tony Blair told Parliament there was a need for large organisations such as Sony to have both “some sense of responsibility and some sensitivity to the feelings of communities.” He said there was a need for recognition that “there is a wider social responsibility” that goes beyond simply the “responsibility for profit” whatever the cost.
  • His comments came as the Dean of Manchester, he Very Reverend Rogers Govender, disclosed that Sony had made no formal contact since the row was disclosed by The Times last Friday night.
  • Virtual images of the interior of the cathedral feature prominently in a violent shoot-out in the flagship PlayStation 3 game Resistance: Fall of Man.
  • The computer game shows scenes of bloody violence where players must shoot dead a host of enemies using weapons such as a Rossmore 236 close-quarter combat shotgun, the L23 fareye sniper rifle and an XR-005 Hailstorm chaingun.
  • Cathedral clergy believe the use of Manchester as a setting for the shoot-out game is particularly inappropriate because of the city's history of gun violence. A Church spokesman said the issue had provoked particular controversy in Japan.
  • The Dean said: “On Monday we sent a letter to Sony outlining our concerns and making some key demands. Today I want to report that since sending that letter we have had no formal response from Sony.
  • We believe a silent response on the issue is not acceptable behaviour for a responsible large corporate body. Today I want to appeal directly to the people of Japan to help us put pressure on Sony to respond.
  • So I speak directly to those citizens who share our concerns. “For a global manufacturer to recreate the interior of any religious building such as a mosque, synagogue, or in this case, a cathedral, with photo realistic quality and then encourage people to have gun battles in the building is beyond belief and in our view highly irresponsible.”
  • He once again called on Sony to withdraw the game, to apologise unreservedly for using the interior without permission and to make a substantial donation to the Church's education department which helps tackle gun violence. The cathedral is consulting lawyers over what to do next.

While video games venture into the realm of the sacred for kicks, they never quite seem to touch upon the ideas of the Classical Judeo-Christian Heritage—the spirit of freedom. A video game which allowed the player to fight for freedom in a deeper philosophical context would stand head-and-shoulders above the rest of the prior and current art.

Ideas have consequences, as we live in an idea-driven world. Belief systems inform reality's context, and as games strive towards spiritual realism, to compliment their photo-realism, ideas and philosophies must be introduced. Games will achieve depth proportional to the depth of the introduced philosophies.

As Thomas Jefferson stated, “The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and so it is that games which allow one to fight against ideological tyrants for liberty will offer a brand new realm of gaming—a realm with superior depth.

Imagine a game where one didn't just shoot prostitutes for the fun of it—where one didn't just run around jacking cars for the fun of it—where one didn't just participate in a massacre inside a cathedral for the fun of it, but where one's decisions of who and who not to shoot actually played a role in the destiny of the game world—where one could see one's actions rendered in the high-pixel counts—where one could see firsthand the graphic failures of socialism and communism, the war, poverty, and persecution found at the end of groupthink's road to serfdom.

Imagine a video game that brought The Road to Serfdom to life. Central planning leads to socialism, which leads to communism, which leads to a world of tyranny and slavery—and the opportunity for the player to save the world from tyranny and slavery would make for an awesome game.

The first person shooter would incorporate Al characters that would quote the likes of Hayek and Mises, or Marx and Lenin, and based upon the spoken ideologies of the in-game character, the protagonist would have to choose who and who not to befriend, recruit, ignore, run away from, and shoot. Some players may be able to be reasoned with—others won't be able to be reasoned with. Dialogue trees or other means may be incorporated for purposes of reasoning.

For instance, a libertarian character would say something like:

“Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality—an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.”—Hayek

“It is an enormous simplification to speak of the American mind. Every American has his own mind.”—Mises

While a socialist/communist character would say:

• • “It is true that liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.”—Lenin
  • “Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”—Lenin
  • One man with a gun can control 100 without one.—Lenin
  • A lie told often enough becomes truth.—Lenin
  • From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.—Karl Marx
  • In a higher phase of communist society . . . only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.—Karl Marx
  • Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.—Karl Marx
  • Religion is the opium of the masses.—Karl Marx

Kill the libertarians, and the world marches along the road to serfdom—the economies collapse and the central bureaucrats overwhelm the world with double-speak and totalitarianism. Daughters and wives are sold into prostitution, and signs rise up everywhere, stating

• • WAR IS PEACE
  • FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
  • IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
  • Shoot the libertarians, and the game-world devolves into Orwell's 1984, as depicted at wikiquote:
  • http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
    • The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep's bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine-gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backward in their seats. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of Big Brother, black-haired, black-moustachio'd, full of power and mysterious calm, and so vast that it almost filled up the screen. Nobody heard what Big Brother was saying. It was merely a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not distinguishable individually but restoring confidence by the fact of being spoken. Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:
    • WAR IS PEACE
    • FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
    • IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
    • But the face of Big Brother seemed to persist for several seconds on the screen, as though the impact that it had on everyone's eyeballs was too vivid to wear off immediately. The little sandy-haired woman had flung herself forward over the back of the chair in front of her. With a tremulous murmur that sounded like ‘My Saviour!’ she extended her arms towards the screen. Then she buried her face in her hands. It was apparent that she was uttering a prayer.
    • At this moment the entire group of people broke into a deep, slow, rhythmic chant of ‘B-B! . . . B-B! . . . B-B!’—over and over again, very slowly, with a long pause between the first ‘B’ and the second—a heavy mumurous sound, somehow curiously savage, in the background of one which seemed to hear the stamps of naked feet and the throbbing of tom-toms. For perhaps as much as thirty seconds they kept it up. It was a refrain that was often heard in moments of overwhelming emotion. Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.
  • In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner of later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. (1.7)
  • Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.—Hayek
  • If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.—Hayek
  • Freedom granted only when it is known beforehand that its effects will be beneficial is not freedom.—Hayek
  • If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion.
  • We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.—Hayek
  • “From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.”—Hayek
  • “There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.”—Hayek
  • “We must show that liberty is not merely one particular value but that it is the source and condition of most moral values. What a free society offers to the individual is much more than what he would be able to do if only he were free. We can therefore not fully appreciate the value of freedom until we know how a society of free men as a whole differs from one in which unfreedom prevails.”—Hayek
  • “Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality—an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.”—Hayek
  • It is an enormous simplification to speak of the American mind. Every American has his own mind.—Mises
  • The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.—Lenin
  • Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat.—Lenin
  • When there is state there can be no freedom, but when there is freedom there will be no state.—Lenin
  • Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.—Lenin
  • The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.—Lenin
  • Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.—Lenin
  • It is true that liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.—Lenin
  • Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.—Lenin
  • One man with a gun can control 100 without one.—Lenin
  • A lie told often enough becomes truth.—Lenin
  • From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.—Karl Marx
  • In a higher phase of communist society . . . only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.—Karl Marx
  • Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.—Karl Marx
  • Religion is the opium of the masses.—Karl Marx
  • Revolutions are the locomotives of history.—Karl Marx
  • Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.—Karl Marx
  • The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.—Karl Marx
  • The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.—Karl Marx
  • The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.—Karl Marx
  • The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.—Karl Marx
  • The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.—Karl Marx
  • We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass.—Karl Marx
  • Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.—Karl Marx
  • The Left intelligentsia, indeed, have so long worshipped foreign gods that they seem to have become almost incapable of seeing any good in the characteristic English institutions and traditions. That the moral values on which most of them pride themselves are largely the product of the institutions they are out to destroy, these socialists, of course, cannot admit.—p. 220, The Road to Serfdom
  • Issues in this field have become so confused that it is necessary to go back to fundamentals. What our generation is in danger of forgetting is not only that morals are of necessity a phenomenon of individual conduct but also that they can only exist in the sphere in which the individual is free to decide for himself and is called upon voluntarily to sacrifice personal advantage to the observance of a moral rule.—p. 216, The Road to Serfdom
  • It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now—independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntarily cooperate with one's neighbors—are essentially those on which the working of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it has already destroyed them it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to do what is collectively decided to be good.—p. 216, The Road to Serfdom
  • There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which Anglo-Saxons justly prided themselves in which they were generally recognized to excel. The virtues these people possessed—in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch—were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one's neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a health suspicion of power and authority. Almost all the traditions and institutions in which democratic moral genius has found the national character and the whole moral climate of England and America, are those which the progress of collectivism and its inherently centralistic tendencies are progressively destroying.—p. 219, The Road to Serfdom
  • Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free? More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves. They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always the right to win it, whenever they have the power, be the voices so numerous that oppose it. John Milton,—p. 210, The Road to Serfdom
  • The recent growth of monopoly is largely the result of a deliberate collaboration of organized capital and organized labor where the privileged groups of labor share in the monopoly profits at the expense of the community and particularly at the expense of the poorest, those employed in the less-well-organized industries and the unemployed.—p. 207, The Road to Serfdom
  • Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders even in countries still under a liberal regime.—The Road to Serfdom
  • To deprecate the value of intellectual freedom because it will never mean for everybody the same possibility of independent thought is completely to miss the reasons which give intellectual freedom its value.—The Road to Serfdom, p. 179
  • Once science has to serve, not truth, but the interests of a class, a community, or a state, the sole task of argument and discussion is to vindicate and to spread still further beliefs by which the whole life of the community is directed. As the Nazi minister of justice has explained, the question which every new scientific theory must ask itself is: “Do I serve National Socialism for the greatest benefit of all?”—p. p 178

Another possible embodiment of the video game would show how a world with digital rights management and property rights would be superior to a world without property rights in the digital realm. Uncreative lawyers are natural collectivists as they must earn their living not via the creation of wealth, but by its transfer. The United States constitution simply states that artists and authors—creators and inventors—have the Rights to their creations. Thus, a natural extension of technologies would afford a full protection of their property rights. Many lawyers oppose digital rights management,

When the collectivist lawyers reign supreme, the culture declines in the name of mashups and the empowerment of the mobs and masses. Instead of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Kid Rock, we get myspace bands, degradation, and decadence. Indeed, the decline and fall of culture is not due entirely to the technological directions that lawyers seek to impose—that would be giving them too much credit. The decline and fall of culture is also due to the postmodern ethos that dominates the art, that has inverted Aristotle's poetics and placed spectacle in front of stories, which brings us back to video games. So it is that the same postmodern ideals which are eroding property rights have also been eroding the art of epic storytelling, leaving us in a world without classical archetypes—a world of soulless Hollywood remakes, video games dominated by spectacle and incapable of depth, and a society that catches the common man in the crossfire between big government bureaucracy and big businesses bureaucracy. The Postmodern Matrix is one of the greatest pyramid schemes ever conceived—enriching professors who never leave the cave, while inflating grades for the students who take out loans to fund the shadows dancing on the wall.

As the video game industry contemplates story, it might help at some point to contemplates that which makes the great story—it might help for the experts to study The Odyssey—to read Shakespeare and the Bible, and see why these stories have endured for thousands of years. Instead, they opt for the common postmodern path—quote some watered down treatment of Joseph Campbell—look at a shadow of a shadow of a shadow, and say, “I see it! That is reality! That is what story is all about, and now we shall include it!” Then they call the Microsoft reality department, and all is made whole, as Microsoft pens a PR press release:

Gears of War unites next-generation technology with classic, emotional storytelling and a revolutionary tactical combat system, engrossing the gamer in a horrifying epic story of war and survival.—http://videogames.bamesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?ean=2000003128273

Easily the weakest aspect of GEARS OF WAR is the storytelling. It is not unusual for action games to scrimp on story. Ironically, GEARS has an interesting story behind it, the only problem being that the developers don't actually tell that story.—http://geeksofdoom.com/2006/12/14/game-review-gears-of-war/

In the cult of the amateur, Andrew Keen writes,

• • “The fact is that co-opting other people's creative work—from music file sharing, to downloading movies and videos, to passing off others' writing as one's own—is not only illegal, in most cases, but immoral. Yet the widespread acceptance of such behavior threatens to undermine a society that has been built upon hard work, innovation, and the intellectual achievement of our writers, scientists, artists, composers, musicians, journalists, pundits, and music makers.
  • Stanford University professor Denise Pope tries to explain away cheating as a consequence of the excessive academic pressure on kids. “On the part of students, there's an eerie logic to justify cheating. It's three o'clock in the morning, you're exhausted, you've worked hard . . . . Rather than getting a zero, you'd take your chances with plagiarism.”—p. 145

Who has done more damage over time? Collectivist intellectuals who erode the Truth, or prostitutes forced into a life of servitude as women all too often are in communistic countries? Why is it then that video games celebrate killing prostitutes, but never collectivist intellectuals? Would it not be more satisfying saving society than killing a poor hooker? Should the game not afford us to tell her to “go forth and sin no more,” and then turn upon the collectivist Kings and Tyrants?

So it is that the present video game would afford a far greater gameplay experience, by affording players the opportunity to effect the course of history in the gameplay world in a positive manner, by shooting collectivist intellectuals instead of prostitutes.

• • Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig argues that “legal sharing” and “reuse” of intellectual property is a social benefit. In fact, as I discussed in Chapter 1, Lessig wants to replace what he calls our “Read-Only” Internet with a “read-Write” internet, where we can “remix” and “mashup” all content indiscriminately. Lessig, misguided as he is, suggests that digital content—whether it be a song, a video, short story, or a photograph—should be commonly owned for the benefit of everyone. What Lessig fails to acknowledge is that most of the content being shared—no matter how many times it has been linked, cross-linked, annotated, and copied—was composed or written by someone from the sweat of their creative brow and the disciplined use of their talent.—p. 144
  • But students who cheat aren't genuinely learning anything. And by depriving artists and writers of the royalties due them, they aren't just hurting those from whom they steal—in the end, they are hurting us all.—p. 145
  • “The Judeo-Christian ethic of respecting others' property that has been central to our society since the country's founding is being tossed into the delete file of our desktop computers. The pasting, remixing, mashing, borrowing, copying—the stealing—of intellectual property has become the single most pervasive activity on the Internet. And it is reshaping and distorting our values and our very culture. The breadth of today's mass kleptocracy is mind-boggling. I'm not referring only to the $20 billion pilfered and pickpocketed, day by day, from the music industry or the $2.3 billion and growing from the movie industry. Sadly, the illegal downloading of music and movies has become so commonplace, so ordinary, that even the most law-abiding among us, like Brianna LaHara, now do it without thinking. “How are we supposed to know it's illegal?” asks a bookkeeper in Redwood city, Calif., as he copied a playlist of songs to give out a party.”—p. 142
  • The problem is not just pirated movies and music. It's become a broader quandary over who-owns-what in an age when anyone, with the click of a mouse, can cut and paste content and make it their own. Web 2.0 technology is confusing the very concept of ownership, creating a generation of plagiarists and copyright thieves with little respect for intellectual property. In addition to stealing music or movies, they are stealing articles, photographs, letters, research, videos, jingles, characters, and just about anything else that can be digitized and copied electronically. Our kids are downloading and using this stolen property to cheat their way through school and university, passing off the words and work of others as their own in papers, projects, and theses

To counter Andrew Keen, Larry Lessig has created a wiki for his fanboys, who might or might not receive direct or indirect moneys from the Stanford Law Society or the Internet or something, and who might or might not be training lawyers for lucrative jobs at google-owned youtube such as Glenn Otis Brown. If only we had had technology during the trial of Socrates, Larry could have set up a wikipage where the elders of the Athenian court could post and edit one-another's reasons for sentencing Socrates to death. Another wiki page could have been set up for the crucifixion of Christ, so that Pontius Pilate could better discern who to release, and who to crucify. The recent book The Wisdom of Crowds has scientifically proven that the crowd is smarter than the individual, and future art and science will be created by the mob, and not Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Newton, and Einstein.

So it is that a video game that allowed one to shoot the academic, scholarly monsters who “hurt us all” would be a lot more fun than just shooting monsters with high pixel counts, killing innocent prostitutes, and participating in massacres in Cathedrals and historic buildings celebrating the Judeo-Christian heritage.

The Battle for the Woman's Soul

Imagine a video game that allowed you to battle for the woman's soul. In Unhooked, Laura Sessions Step writes,

• • We found, for example, that the proportion of young women ages eighteen to twenty-two who reported having intercourse—seventy-five percent—equaled that of young men. Seventy percent of both sexes had had sex before their nineteenth birthdays. Only one-third of young women said they truly wanted to have sex the first time they did so, compared to one-half of the young men. One particularly interesting finding was that while two out of three young men said it was better to get married than go through a single life, fewer than half of the young women felt that way.

So it is that the postmodern elite—the teachers and media mavens, have turned young woman against marriage, so as to harness them to the corporate ploughs. Imagine a video game that allowed one to return marriage's greater glory, by shooting the elite theorists, sipping cappachinos and driving expensive European cars, as they destroy the future lives of their students and bankrupt a country both morally and spiritually.

• • Nicole was a closet romantic. Indeed, most of the girls I observed came across initially as ball-busters, but privately, either late at night or after a couple drinks, they morphed into softer versions of Bridget Jones, hoping for someone to knock on their door, flowers in hand. As hard as they tried to run away from love, they ended up falling in love, usually only briefly, and were reluctant to callit anything but “having feelings for.”
  • So why did they continue to hook up? Section Three, which shares the stories of Shaida, Cleo and Victoria, suggests three reasons: the ethic of female empowerment; parental expectations for acadmic and professional achievement; and reluctance on the part of authorities on campus to intervene in student's social life.

That's exactly it—there is no moral leadership on campus. The rising generation has been turned into one great big corporate experiment, and it is far more profitable to deconstruct the souls of women, than it is to bolster them with the Great Books and Classics. A video game that allowed one to roam the campus, chainsawing all the corporate feminists who are deconstructing the Great Books so that the souls of the young wither and die as they go into vast debts, so that they will become wage slaves and abuse assistant corporate-serving professors for the rest of their lives, would be a vast improvement over video games. The present invention would foster a game in which one can defend ideas, ideals, and ideas that have consequences.

Also, it will be fun to battle for the Judeo Christian heritage throughout the halls of the health profession. In the book Unprotected, A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student, Anonymous, M.D., writes,

• • Campus counseling centers are busier than ever. In a 2005 survey, 90 percent of these centers revealed an increase in the number of students seen with serious psychological problems. The number of psychiatric consultation hours doubled. Ninety-one percent of centers hospitalized a student for psychological reasons, and over 36 percent experienced one or more suicides . . . why are our kids in such bad shape? . . . . I contend that radical social ideologies are to blame, especially when they've spread from the classroom to the counseling center.

Imagine a video game, such as those fostered by the present invention, that allowed one to save these students by battling radical theories. Anonymous continues,

• • Radical politics pervades my profession, and common sense has vanished. Not long ago, a psychiatrist might call casual sexual activity “mindless” and “empty.” Before political correctness muzzled our nation in the nineties, a campus physician might advise a student that it is love and lifelong fidelity that bring joy ad liberated sensuality, and provide the best insurance against sexually-transmitted diseases. An unwanted pregnancy, an abortion—these were weighty issues. We understood that men and women are profoundly different, and weren't afraid to say so. It was clear that liaisons outside a committed relationship could be hazardous, and a young woman would be wise to wait until someone serious came along. A sexually transmitted infection, even one easily cured, was a serious matter. Self-restraint built character. Certain behaviors were abnormal, and those who practiced them needed help. Traditional marriage and parenthood were valued milestones. To search for meaning, and to make sacrifices for higher purpose—these were noble endeavors that defined our humanity.

The present invention proposes a video game that allows the main character to fight the good fight—to fight for a world where characters “make sacrifices for higher purpose.” Anonymous continues,

• • Things have changed. Now young people are advised to use latex . . . . There is tacit approval of promiscuity and experimentation . . . . Infection with one of the sexually transmitted viruses is a right of passage; it comes with the territory. Abortion is the removal of unwanted tissue, sort of like a tonsillectomy . . . . Clubs funded by student fees celebrate risky, fringe behaviors.

Imagine a video game wherein ideas had consequences, and wherein one could take flamethrowers to the above immoral clubs, and Gears of War chainsaws to any student counselor who said something like, “Abortion is just the removal of unwanted tissue.” Players who were successful would enjoy a world of romance, everlasting love, marriage, and truth. Players who failed would be forced to reside in the hell of broken homes, STDs, perversions, and eternal damnation—straight out of that glorious epic known as Dante's Inferno. A video game that allowed the player to strive to pass God's judgment in word and deed would be awesome. It would be far superior to the prior and current art, and would take gaming to the next level. Anonymous continues,

• • Young women think motherhood can be delayed indefinitely; women's health teaches them only about preventing pregnancy. Traditional marriage and a mother and father are just one option; there are other alternatives, all equally valid . . . . These changes are the result of social agendas foisted on the campus community, and in my work at the counseling center, I see the consequences daily. Dangerous behaviors are a personal choice; judgments are prohibited—they might offend.

Imagine picking up Doom's BFG (Big Fucking Gun) and letting it lose on the pomo-hipster psycobabblers absorbing the fiatocracy's tax and tuition dollars en route to deconstructing the students' souls and enslaving them to Wall Street's debt and debauchery. Imagine chainsawing their desks in two with Unreal Tournament's chainsaw, and then lopping their heads off. This would afford a vast and marked improvement over Gears of War, which gets boring as it relegates the player to meaningless, gratuitous violence against men and monsters alike. Hamlet is one of the most violent plays of all time—it is also the most produced and most quotes—but it is also sublime, as Hamlet contemplates the reasons behind his actions. Reason is rooted in words, and thus killing an in-game character because of their philosophies and ideas which kill the unborn would be a far more enjoyable video game. Anonymous continues,

• • When lesbians have a child, it's time to celebrate, but when Catholics or Mormons have their sixth, that's, well, kind of extreme, and the eyes roll. Staff are encouraged to attend a meeting featuring a transgendered person and his therapist, who describes the journey from female to male. The mental health benefits of church attendance are never discussed; instead, a past president of the American Psychological Association (APA) declares organized religions a major source of social injustice.

Imagine taking Doom's BGF and Gears of War's chainsaw to the fiatocracy's ideology. Most tenured academics prefer that fanboys stick to killing innocent cops, stealing cars, and hiring and killing prostitutes, as most pomo academics are dedicated to training the fiatocracy's wealth transferrers and bankers. If one fails, their daughters/sisters will be denied marriage and children, and will be forced to become wage slaves to Wall Street's bottom line, instead of serving do's higher ideals and glory in the family. Anonymous continues:

• • A committee of that organization is worried about what I think and how I speak. They advise me to never assume that a patient is heterosexual, or that sexual activity might lead to pregnancy. I should avoid thinking of men and women as “opposites,” as in “opposite sex.” I should not use this term, the committee cautions, “to avoid polarization.” . . . My profession has been hijacked. I cannot do my job, my patients are suffering, and I am fed up.

Imagine the feel of the xbox 360 controller, vibrating in your hand as you chainsaw the above committee of the fiatocracy. Zzzzzzzzzzzzztztztt! Zzzzzzzzztztztztz! Blood splatters everywhere, just as it does in Gears of War. But this time it means something. You are saving the millions of damsels in distress—girls who will be turned into whores in such a brilliant manner that they will never even notice it, and will in fact hate anyone who tries to save them. Many will grow old alone with cats, never knowing what hit them. The present invention would foster games wherein ideas have consequences, and wherein one could defend innocent cops, civilians, and prostitutes, instead of killing them.

The fairer sex is oft the more susceptible to hype and deceit, and that is why Wall Street and Government put them on the front lines of both their capitalistic and socialistic agendas that catch the innocent, hardworking man in the crossfire, from cradle to grave and beyond. The present video game would allow the protagonist to chainsaw and/or shoot the corrupt postmodern government bureaucrats, who “grow” the government while pretending to shrink it and send US Marines to far off lands so that their women too can be harnessed to Sex and the City, thusly destroying all families in the new world order, and putting everyone to work in a quantifiable manner—in a manner that can be counted down in dollars from the mint—dollars that are printed and not backed by anything other than the postmodern lie this game allows one to defeat for once and for all. The present invention allows the lone hero to kill, mame, and destroy the corrupt postmodern idealogues, instead of killing hookers and innocent civilians. This is a vast improvement over the current and prior art, which relegates one to killing prostitutes, shooting innocent people and stealing their cars, and engaging in massacres in replicas of famous Cathedrals.

Farsight XR 20, Unreal's RazorJack, Gravity Gun//Half-Life 2, 6) Blades of Chaos//God of War, Bazooka//Grand Theft Auto 3, Shrink Ray//Duke Nukem 3D, Lightsaber//nearly any Star Wars game, 1) Light Disc//Discs of Tron, Tron 2.0.

• • The social change some of them envision is profound. They hope to destabilize a truth of science and civilization: that the sexes are deeply and essentially different. Their goal is an androgynous culture, where the differences between male and female are discounted or denied, and the bond between them robbed of singularity. I contend that to turn the therapy session or clinic visit into an instrument promoting this agenda is a corruption of the health profession. It demands a response.

Imagine a first-person shooter that allowed one to kill all in-game secular health professionals who are destroying the souls of women so as to excommunicate women from the home, further destroy the family, and rope women to Wall Street's bottom line in a job serving her MBA boss instead of her husband and children.

• • It's bad enough that adrogony, promiscuity, and “alternative sexualities” are promoted by Hollywood; it is altogether another matter to have them endorsed by professional health organizations and college administrators . . . . These agendas are promoted by devoted professionals devoted to altruism. Nonetheless, damage is done. Students in treatmemt are endangered, as the prevailing anything-goes attitudes are officially endorsed, rather than challenged. And like secondhand smoke, the behavior of one can effect many, as these students interact, influence, and “hookup” with their peers. As we ponder the epidemic of depression, cutting, suicidal behavior, and eating disorders on our campuses, I suggest we look first in our own backyard.

Imagine a first-person shooter that allowed the in-game character to battle “cutting, suicidal behavior, and eating disorders,” by shooting all the pop-psyche babblers. Whenever an in-game character is heard “turning the therapy session or clinic visit into an instrument promoting this agenda (that corrupts the health profession)” it is the player's job to shoot them.

Anonymous has both the Bible and science on her side. She writes,

• • It bears repeating that it is my fellow professionals I fault here, not the young people we all strive to help, and that these are health, not moral issues. I argue as a scientist, with biological facts, not biblical ones. Forget Leviticus—as you'll see, my data is from The New England Journal of Medicine and the Centers for Disease control and Prevention.

A video game that allowed the participant to fight for the cause of science would be a great video game indeed.

In The Bonfire of The Humanities, John Heath pens the words that will bring the deeper soul of next-gen video games to life:

• • For the men of the Iliad, the heroic life was simply defined: to be a speaker of words and doer of deeds. The trick was to make your words become actions and not mere substitutes for them. Thus after warriors meeting one-on-one had engaged in their customary taunting, it was quickly time to turn speech into deed. “But come, let us no longer stand here talking of these things like children, here in the space between advancing armies. For there are harsh things enough that could be spoken against us both, a ship of a hundred locks could not carry the burden.
  • The tongue of man is a twisty thing, there are plenty of words there of every kind, the range of words is wide, and their variance. The sort of thing you say is the thing that will be said to you. But what have you and I to do with the need for squabbling and hurling insults at each other, as if we were two wives who when they have fallen upon a heart-perishing quarrel go out in the street and say abusive things to each other, much true, and much that is not, and it is their rage that drives them.”
  • You will not by talking turn me back from the strain of my warcraft, not till you have fought to my face with the bronze. Come on then and let us try each other's strength with the bronze of our spearheads.
  • He spoke, and on the terrible grim shield drove the ponderous spike, so that the great shield moaned as it took the spearhead. (20.244-60, trans. Lattimore)
  • This link between what we say and do, so central to Greek thinking, has of course been completely severed in the modern university . . . . The Bonfire of The Humanities, John Heath, p. 55-56

And so too has the link between words and actions never been capitalized in video games, and thus the deeper soul has never been brought to life in the realm of gaming. Imagine if one could choose to shoot people based on their ideologies, as opposed to killing innocent prostitutes and pedestrians, and jacking cars, shooting innocent drivers, and letting them bleed to death on the streets.

Postmodern liberals have nothing against gratuitous, meaningless violence—they only detest violence in the name of justice, as justice gets in the way of the postmodern power structure—the bottom-line oriented Postmodern Matrix. However, just like the Founding Fathers, the Greek philosophers, and the Biblical prophets, higher souls, who create lasting culture and art, yearn for Truth and Beauty, and thus video games allowing them to fight for truth and beauty shall triumph over the current state of the art, which offers higher and higher pixel counts, but nothing in the way of enhanced storytelling, deeper characters, nor exalting art. Sure, the marketing departments will trumpet the “cinematic, emotional storytelling,” by they are commanded to do so by the postmodern Wall Street MBAs and their feminist MFA friends, both of whom have joined in holy matrimony, united against Truth.

The present invention shall bring the spirit of the classics to life—a spirit which the rising generation yearns for on all fronts. Great American Novels with Great American Heroes have been banned, and the only place we are allowed to glimpse romance is in comic books and the movies that are made form them. But they are all unreal, and they teach us that just as Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, truth, honor, and justice are but make-believe entities. But the Glory of lasting Art and Philosophy and Religion was that it was Real. Socrates really Died. Jesus really Died. The Founding Fathers actually pledged their lives and Sacred Honour for higher ideals. And so it is that video games, which allowed the protagonist to battle realistic demons of contemporary ideologies, would stand head and shoulders above the rest of the pact in their Reality.

Too many academics are lost in inaction. Too many take the journalistic approach, content to say “we are in an age of decline,” but they never do a damned thing about it. Heath writes,

• • This is perhaps one of the most uncomfortable aspects of academic populism—it requires us to act differently, to spend more time with students and less in research centers, to teach more classes, to write for a broad audience, and to trust in our material. If we limit our efforts to the admittedly important task of documenting the degeneration of the quality of our discipline—especially if we do so for fellow academics in the comfort of reduced teaching and skipped classes—we can hardly expect to bring about change. At some point in the near future—and books like the two under review here convincingly reveal just how much work is to be done—we must, like Aeneas, stop our talking and hurl the spear, even if we are doomed to fail. Aeneas loses his battle with Achilles and even the final, brutal triumph over Turnus is filled with ambiguity, but he ultimately changes the world. The Bonfire of The Humanities, John Heath, p. 56-57

This present invention hurls the spear.

Brought up in an orphaned culture and taught to hype, lie, cheat, and steal, video game publicity departments have no problem hyping the supposed stories in current titles. Many of them have never read Shakespeare, nor Homer, nor Dante, nor the Gospels, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Campbell, and they know not what Epic Story is.

This present invention capitalizes on the enforced fanboy ignorance of the video game industry, by proposing a brand-new, exalted form of gaming.

• • Idomeneus answered, “I know you for a brave man: you need not tell me. If the best men at the ships were being chosen to go on an ambush—and there is nothing like this for showing what a man is made of; it comes out then who is cowardly and who brave; the coward will change colour at every touch and turn; he is full of fears, and keeps shifting his weight first on one knee and then on the other; his heart beats fast as he thinks of death, and one can hear the chattering of his teeth; whereas the brave man will not change colour nor be on finding himself in ambush, but is all the time longing to go into action—if the best men were being chosen for such a service, no one could make light of your courage nor feats of arms. If you were struck by a dart or smitten in close combat, it would not be from behind, in your neck nor back, but the weapon would hit you in the chest or belly as you were pressing forward to a place in the front ranks. But let us no longer stay here talking like children, lest we be ill spoken of, go, fetch your spear from the tent at once.”—http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/iliad.13.xiii.html

Battling Double-Speaking Administrators

A favorite tactic of liberal, socialist white males is to sell everyone else down the river. They believe that more women should have jobs, so they give them your job. They believe that science important, so they hire more economists and central-planners to calculate just how important science is, and they then offshore all the science jobs, and hire women to proclaim how important science is, as they erect technology-transfer departments, filled with useless MBAs and lawyers, to transfer the technology out of the inventors' hands and into the bureaucracy's hands. In the day and age of slavery, these socialist, white, liberals would have been happy to have slaves, and lacking justice and God in their hearts, they have not changed. There is no shortage of such men—they were at the trials of Socrates and Jesus, and gleefully saw them both put to death.

The glory of the present invention is that it would allow one to shoot such men, before they took the lives—the pensions and profits—of prophets and poets. Imagine that Xbox 260 controller vibrating in your hand as you mowed the bug-eyed, Orwellian bureaucrats down. You would find them at meetings, pronouncing meaningless, soulless buzzwords, and you could shoot them in the middle of sentences such as “we believe that the synergy between the feminists deconstruction the traditional role for woman as a mother and wife will vastly bolster our bottom line. We won't kill their children—no—the beauty is that we'll get them to kill their own children, by letting them know that the only way they can gain the economic materialism in Sex and the City—the only way they can afford Carrie's shoes—is if they abort their children and go to work for the Corporation. After a couple of abortions, their souls will die, and they will become such bitches and sluts that no man will ever wish to marry them. We can then have them get their MBA, and we will put them on the front lines of corruption and decline, and should anyone accuse them of being corrupt, we shall call that person a sexist mysoginist. And so it is that we will define pro-life and pro-family as a vice, and perversions and promiscuity shall become virtues. Caught in the crossfire, we shall keep the righteous man down, as we crush him between big government and big business.” The in game player will pick up on the gist of the conversation, and the button on a controller will allow a glorious flame to leap forth, burning the bastard alive, as he shrieks with all the fury of forty-million aborted fetuses, who finally get a tiny, tiny fraction of the justice that is due them.

Then the player can hop into his car and drive down Hollywood Boulevard, going to clubs, punching out snooty doormen and metrosexual bouncers, and beating the crap out of the producers of Deadwood and the writers of Troy and Alexander, avenging the spirit of John Milius: (John Milius) subsided for a moment and then resumed, somewhat mysteriously at first. “Homer,” he pronounced. “Homer. Can you believe what those assholes did to him with that film Troy? Completely embarrassing. Me and my kid, we wanted to take a DVD of the thing, tie it by a cable to our car's bumper, and drag it up and down Hollywood boulevard.” He fell silent for a moment. “Hollywood . . . The only thing I can think of remotely as horrible as war; there are stories, things I have seen in that town that, believe me, I would never tell anyone.”—Valkyries Over Iraq, The Trouble with War Movies, by Lawrnece Weshler, interviewing John Milius in November 2005 Harpers Magazine, academy-award nominated writer of Apocalypse Now, Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, and Electronic Arts' video game Medal of Honor. Prior Art: Violence in Video Games

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy#List_of_video_games_considered_controversial

Wikipedia reports the following concerning violence in video games:

List of video games considered controversial: This lists video games considered controversial based on specific types of content deemed offensive, especially by the censorship crowd. Crime and Violence.

These games have been the subject of controversy mainly due to depictions of violence, bloodshed, and criminal acts.

25 to Life (for violence against law enforcement officers and the use of human shields)

Firebug (goal is to burn down a building)

Carmageddon (a racing game centered around driving through and killing crowds of pedestrians, in order to score points)

Commando Libya (execution of prisoners as a bonus level)

Conker's Bad Fur Day and Conker: Live and Reloaded (for graphic violence, sexual content, strong graphic language, mature humor, and alcohol usage)

Custer's Revenge (for violent, sexual racism; the player must guide General Custer, sporting a large erection, to rape a bound Native American woman)

Cannon Fodder (original packaging artwork featured a poppy plant, a reference to the UK dead during World War I)

Doom, Doom 2 and Doom3 (for extreme graphic violence and satanic themes)

Duke Nukem 3D (for graphic violence, exotic dancing and negative portrayal of women)

Dead Rising (extreme blood and gore through use of blunt objects and various weapons, profane language, and alcohol use—all which have contributed to the possibility that the game might become officially banned in Germany)

Death Race (arcade game with goal of killing pedestrians with cars)

Ethnic Cleansing (for neo-Nazi propaganda, racism and depiction of crimes against humanity)

F.E.A.R. (intense graphic violence, disturbing content.)

GoldenEye 007 (for graphic violence and disturbing deaths)

Grand Theft Auto Series (for graphic violence, sexual content, drug use, strong graphic language, sexual themes, carjacking, negative portrayal of ethnic groups (specifically Cubans and Haitians in Vice City) and the Hot Coffee Mod (San Andreas only))

GUN (for extreme graphic violence in gameplay and cut-scenes, strong language, alcohol usage during gameplay and recovering your health, depictions of Native Americans, and sexual themes that involved women in different clothing)

God of War (for extreme violence, sexual interaction, and large amounts of blood and gore)

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (depiction of the Holocaust)

Kakuto Chojin (pulled from release internationally due to the offensive use of Muslim chants in background music)

Kingpin: Life of Crime (first high profile first-person shooter to be released after the Columbine High School massacre)

Killer7 (for graphic violence and sexuality)[28]

Manhunt (for extreme graphic violence and dealing with the taboo subject of snuff films). The sequel, Manhunt 2 was banned in the UK and currently Nintendo and Sony refuse to license the game in the U.S. due to the ESRB giving Manhunt 2 the AO rating.

Mortal Kombat series (for extreme graphic violence and gore while fighting your opponent)

NARC (for drug use by law enforcement)

Night Trap (for alleged brutality and sexual themes)

Nightmare Creatures (for violence and dark images)

Postal² (for extreme graphic violence)

The Punisher (for strong language, extreme violence, use of human shields, and extremely graphic depictions of brutal torture techniques)

Redneck Rampage (for stereotyped depiction of Southern Americans)

Perfect Dark (for language, more violence than its predecessor GoldenEye 007 and the inclusion of a feature called PerfectHead, which was quickly scrapped due to poor media coverage)

Primal Rage (for extreme violence, crude images, and negative images of the human race)

Pyro 2 (for arson and destruction of government buildings)

Reservoir Dogs (for violence against law enforcement officers, use of human shields, strong language, and the ability to torture hostages)

Resident Evil series (for rather disturbing graphic violence and scary images)

Rule of Rose (erotic undertones involving a cast of female minors)

Saints Row (for graphic violence and strong language)

Scarface: The World is Yours (for extreme graphic violence in gameplay and cut-scenes)

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne (For Violence, Dark images, Language and Strong satanic themes)

Silent Hill (for graphic violence and very disturbing imagery)

Soldier of Fortune and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix (For advanced graphic innovation in the depiction of violence, use of controversial location settings, and allegations of perceived cultural insensitivity)

Thrill Kill (for extreme graphic violence, BDSM references and minor nudity)

True Crime: Streets of LA (for violence, extreme shoot-outs on streets and missions, strong language, and S&M)

True Crime: New York City (for violence, extreme shoot-outs on streets and missions, strong language, use of drugs, and racial slurs)

Twisted Metal: Black (for extreme graphic violence in movie scenes only)

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (graphic violence)

The Warriors (Violence and drug use to refill the player's health.)

Unreal tournament series (extreme graphic violence)

Wolfenstein 3-D and Return to Castle Wolfenstein (for violence and constant references to Nazi Germany)

Waxworks (extreme graphic violence and gore)

The Xenosaga series (for paedophile reference in Episode I and extreme violence see for example the controversy caused by one of the recurring characters.)

Ironically enough, none of the prior art contains violence against pomo hipsters and postmodern academics and lawyers—those responsible for the decline of civility, the end of the Classic Western, Deadwood, string theory, and Wall Street scandals. None of the prior art contains a system that rewards the player for violence against those who state immoral things, nor violence against those who find abortion in the Constitution while discounting the Constitution's intellectual property rights that grant the author and inventor the rights to their patents such as this one. Abortion is an assault against the most fundamental form of private property—life—and if they can find abortion in the constitution, we should not be surprised when they come after all property rights. Both postmodern Wall Street and postmodern Government erode the Truth so as to transfer wealth from the artist and creator to the postmodern, amoral bureaucrat.

PRIOR ART

• • Video Game Storytelling Stinks, Needs To Get Better, Developers Say, In GameFile ‘I like to leave story to books and movies,’ one exec says.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1583092/20080310/id_—0.jhtmi

As story is soul; as no religion is defined purely by graphics and music, video game execs are saying that we need to leave soul to books and movies, and thus vast opportunities exist.

This video game allows the player to engage in an exalted form of Aristotle's Poetics—to render the world the way it ought to be. “History tells us as things are,” Aristotle wrote, “while story tells us the way it ought to be,” and thus games shall finally realize higher art and epic storytelling, as they allow the player to realize the world as it ought to be, based on a moral premise found within the classical, Judeo-Christian context—truth, beauty, and freedom.

Wikipedia reports,

• • From time to time, local officials attempt to restrict the playing or selling of violent video games. Predictably, the ESA (representing video game publishers) and the IEMA (representing game retailers) oppose the legislation and have been, to-date, victorious in overturning each bill passed. For example, the city of Indianapolis, Ind. in 2000 passed an ordinance barring children from playing arcade games with graphic violence unless parental consent was given. It was generally thought that this law was intended to target the game The House of the Dead, in which players use plastic guns to shoot at the game screen in order to kill zombies that try to kill the player. The ordinance was struck down at the appellate Federal court level, on the grounds that in the United States, video games enjoy some measure of First Amendment free speech protection because they contain real expression of ideas, and children have constitutional rights before the age of 18, and given this, the city did not demonstrate an overriding public interest in passing the ban. Recently, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich passed a law banning the sale of “violent or sexually explicit” video games to minors under the age of 18. The new law would have taken effect Jan. 1, 2006, but was struck down by District Court judge Matthew Kennelly. As Kennelly so concisely put it: “In this country, the state lacks the authority to ban protected speech on the ground that it affects the listener's or observer's thoughts and attitudes.” In doing so, the Judge confirmed yet again that video games are protected under the First Amendment and deserve treatment no different than film and literature. Illinois was forced to pay the ESRB legal fees, approximately 1 million dollars. About three months later, similar laws were passed by Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm and California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The California law, as California Assembly Bills 1792 & 1793, was sponsored by Leland Yee, the Speaker pro Tem of the Assembly and a child psychologist. The laws were deemed unconstitutional by Judge Ronald Whyte on Dec. 21, 2005; preventing it from going into effect on Jan. 1, 2006.
  • On Sep. 11, 2005, Senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act to much criticism. The act was intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games. It has not passed through the Senate. Similar bills introduced at state level were found to be unconstitutional.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy#List_of_video_games_considered_controversial

Video games are protected by free speech,

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

THE DECLINE OF HOLLYWOOD

THE DECLINE OF THE WESTERN

Deadwood was critically hailed as a masterpiece by the Hollywood pomo-hipsters, but that is because all it takes is a few of the F-words, and it is a masterpiece. Holden Caufield wanted to erase the F word, and the Hollywood hipsters, incapable of Epic Story, want to stamp the F-word over all of entirety. They will not be satisfied until every last family is gone, every last women's soul has been corrupted, and every last vestige of culture contains the F word.

This video game would allow the player to shoot Hollywood Hipsters who say the F-word. After the twenty-seventh time it appears in the show, and still story has not yet reared its head, the player will have to light the whole writing team up with a flamethrower, or suffer the consequences of a demented, declining culture. The player must chainsaw all the hypester and hipsters, so as to return order to the classic West.

Because Hollywood hipsters and fanboys hate the Great Books, the Classics, romance and love, all of entirety—everything under the sun—every era and every age—even the old west—must be dominated by degradation and porn. Hence everyone in the old west cussed and abused women, as is evidenced by deep research the pomo-hipster writers of Deadwood conducted into the writings of Abraham Lincoln, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, and Walt Whitman.

Although major corporations hire soulless MBA douchebags to spam amazon; now and then honest reviews get through. This video game would allow the player to shoot the soulless MBA douchebags submitting fake amazon reviews, which bury the honest amazon reviews that follow:

• • http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/B0006FO5LO/ref=cm_rev_sort/002-1135107-4909650?customer-reviews.sort_by=byExactRating_—1&x=6&y=9&s=dvd
  • 3 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
  • Yuch, Jun. 17, 2007
  • By Emily G. Miller—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • Why did I ever get my husband “Deadwood”? I dread watching it. It is simply depressing Yuch
  • I don't care so much about the foul language, Sep. 3, 2006
  • By Monday Warrior—See all my reviews
  • I'm a big fan of The Sopranos so obviously the F word doesn't bother me but this entire series seems like an excuse to show cowboys say the F word and MF. The stories and characters are superficial, boring and unintelligent.
  • People who like this show are the same people who think that what makes The Sopranos a great show is because people get “whacked” a lot SODOM-WOOD or GOMORRAH-WOOD, Aug. 1, 2006
  • By Fritz Von Steiger (Federal Way, Wash.)—See all my reviews
  • I was going to buy the first season, but, the vulgarity and immorality just ruined it for me. As my title states, the series should be called Sodom and Gomorrah wood for all the filthyness. It appears everybody in the old west used the “F” word. I was expecting a child to start saying the word “M . . . F . . . ”. Just more filthy trash from Hollywood. This series will appeal to all the immoral trashy people who enjoy vulgarity and immorality. The only thing good about the series is the acting. Maybe soon they will start using rap phrases also. Too bad, would have been a good series, but, producers and directors are trash themselves for putting this filth on cable tv (HBO). As much as the “F” word is being used today in film, I'm just waiting for anchor people to start saying the “F” word also. “THIS IS BILL O'RILEY SAYING “F . . . Y . . . AND GOOD NIGHT FOLKS, AND DON'T FORGET, NO F . . . G SPIN ON THE O'RILEY FACT, GOOD NIGHT AGAIN, M*&̂)*#F)*&&(#, YOU S#&&$* oF B(&(&#@@. Hollywood will love it.
  • DeadDVD, Feb. 6, 2007
  • By A. L. Moore “premiere reviewer” (Pittsburgh, Pa.)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • I have had problems getting most episodes to play. The first one on each disc plays well as do most “features” on a disc but I never get the second or third episode on a disc to play immediately after watching the previous or first episode. I start, stop, search menu, try next, previous, set up, etc. Usually the episode starts and the sound track is going o.k. but the video “freezes” and progresses out of sync with the sound. The video is of poor quality, obvious digital pixels when this happens. After several trials, over two or three days, I will get another episode to play, almost as a fluke,and it plays perfectly. It took a month of this trial and error method to get through the first season set of discs. I received the second season as a gift and I am having similar problems. Is this a Deadwood problem or is it an Amazon problem? I really like the show but have never experienced such difficulty and frustration using a DVD. This is one of the best productions I have ever seen, I really appreciate the layers, depth, and quality of the acting, cinematography, and the commentaries, but what do I have to do to watch it at my leisure?
  • A wild, wild gimmick, Oct. 19, 2006
  • By J. Anderson (CA United States)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • You want realism of the Old West? Try showing people frequently blowing big wads of snot out their nose and hawking green loogies onto the floor or into their sleeves because they didn't have tissues. Try having the actors and actresses go for a couple of months without washing their hair, and not brushing their teeth with toothpaste, so their hair is oily and their mouths are scuzzy and black.
  • THAT would be realistic, but it's a LOT more repellant to television audiences than gratuitous profanity. So this “realistic” show has characters with clean, fluffy hair and pretty teeth spew garbage langauge constantly—and sucker viewers and reviewers buy this as “realistic”!!! Every great writer of every age and era, be it Mark Twain, Owen Wister, William Shakespeare, or John Steinbeck, or any other storyteller whose works have survived for generations, told “realistic” stories of their era but who understood what realistic trivia to keep in, and what to leave out, in order to TELL THE STORY. That is WHY their work has remained timeless.
  • Deadwood's writing shows a huge insecurity complex in choosing to rely on a gimmick (and a juvenile one at that) like over-the-top profanity. Whether or not the Calamity Janes of the time actually used the words “ignorant f****ng c***s” is something we will never know and is also absolutely irrelevant.
  • There are an awful lot of sheeple in TV land
  • My Deadwood Experience, Aug. 30, 2006
  • By The JuRK (Our Vast, Cultural Desert)—See all my reviews
  • (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
  • I looked forward to the first episode of “Deadwood,” hoping HBO would reinvent the Western they way they had reinvented the mob movies with “The Sopranos.”
  • About ten or fifteen minutes in, I finally told myself that if one more person used a particular profanity—it starts with a C and ends with sucker—I was going to turn it off.
  • I didn't get that thought out before I heard it again. So I shut it off.
  • I hear enough profanity in my daily life and I get plenty from movies and TV. Too much, way too much.
  • Dead Wood Standing, Jun. 11, 2005
  • By Gordon M. Verber (Texas USA)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • “Deadwood” blasts off with very good opening credit scenes and a nice score. The effort made to create a sense of time and place makes one think that one has found something special. However, “Deadwood” then rapidly descends into an abyss of sophomoric swearing, creaking plot, and characters who must be careful not to turn sideways to the camera—least one sees they have only two dimensions.
  • A sense of immediacy was created by the initially unexpectedly appearing extremely violent scenes; yet, with uninspired repetition, these quickly became routine. “Deadwood” reminds me of nothing so much as the computer game DOOM-III®: dark, predictable, violent, and boring.
  • We tried “Deadwood” based on the reviews here which favorably compared it to the, quite excellent, “Firefly” series (the only similarity I can see is that both have nice music), to “Lonesome Dove” (which, in spite of some production defects attributable to a restricted budget, remains the best made-for-Oz western), and which praised the “complex” characters (mistaking, I think, gloom and a hard-stare for complexity).
  • If you are looking for a fun adventure series, then “Firefly” is the choice. If it is westerns you are after, I would suggest “Shane”, “Lonesome Dove”, and “The Outlaw Josey Wales.” If it truly is complexity of character which interests you, then nothing I have seen in a TV series can beat “Cracker”.
  • A warning about “Cracker”: It also is violent and macabre—but only in-so-far as is necessary for plot development—and it is saved by having empathetic, multidimensional characters and HUMOR.
  • That is one of the major failings of “Deadwood”—no humor: Only resolute, grinding, repetitive, predictable conflict and death.
  • We listened to the commentary, hoping that this might bring some meaning to the production, however, this proved the final nail, and we sent it back without viewing the second episode. The commentator sounded as though he had washed down four Quaaludes® with half a case of beer before launching into his disorganized, rambling, unhelpful monotone monologue.
  • In the end that is the problem with “Deadwood”: it is an unyielding grim, monotonous, predictable, violent, monotone.
  • Pass on this turkey.
  • THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES, Aug. 13, 2005
  • By J. S. Radmer (right here)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • First, let me make perfectly clear that I LOVE nearly all the other shows on HBO (Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under), so I'm not easily shocked; and, I admittedly have one of the filthiest mouths around. But I have to say that not only is the sheer amount of profanity absurd in this series, but it's literally delivered like Boyz in the Hood! You half expect someone to say “I'm gonna put a cap in your a_ _!” Everyone else—whose reviews you read here—who is saying that the dialogue is clearly written to reflect those times are either forgetting that it's supposed to be the 1800's, or they are prone to jumping on the bandwagon when a show is popular.
  • When you're watching a show/movie, especially a period piece—as this is supposed to be—it is absolutely necessary for the people creating the show to make us believe it. The illusion is shattered when we're not buying it. e.g. The Matrix would've been a joke if you could see the body wires. In the case of Deadwood, the characters all swear copiously to the point of being boring, but what's FAR, FAR WORSE is the WAY they curse!!! The types of phrasing, wording, and style they use is EXACTLY identical to how you hear contemporary street gangsters talk today! You never get the impression that these are people living in a time well over 100 years ago. They sound like a bunch of teenagers from the MTV generation wrote the teleplay! Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Rent it and find out for yourself.
  • I'm really disappointed in how many people/critics alike are giving this extraordinarily unrealistic language a pass!! To repeat, it's not the language itself that offends me. It's the total and complete lack of realism that it gives the whole proceeding! By the time I was done watching 2 episodes I could “see the body wires” and it just looked to me like grown people playing dress up.
  • DEADWOOD—Like it wasn't, Dec. 11, 2005
  • By R. Dack “adcomm” (St. Louis Park, Minn. United States)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • YIKES! Oh for the days of true dialogue and true history. I wish I had a job where I could just slack off, throw in a few hundred salty words and call it day. I'm tempted to send the producers of this series a Websters Dictionary, apparently they need help in the linguistic dept. The actor playing Preacher Smith is terrible and not historically accurate. Hickock was shot during a rather robust day in 1876 in Deadwood not amongst a few poker players as in this series. Calamity Jane needs a haircut—see pictures of her. Unimpressive and will probably get more awards. Scary! Just give me history. Why is the truth so hard to depict?
  • I thought Hollywood had the greatest talent pool in the U.S. if not the world. Your telling me you can't depict the truth with palatable dialogue so everyone can enjoy the series . . . ok?
  • Deadwood content, Jul. 19, 2005
  • By Ann York (Columbia, Tenn.)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • The content of the Deadwood DVD 1st season has so much FOUL LANGUAGE in it, I can't watch it. I would not have bought it had I known how BAD the language was. I love westerns but this was ridiculous!!!!
  • Weak actors, mostly obscene dialog, Jun. 30, 2005
  • By B. Welch (Midwest USA)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • Do you expect about sixty percent of everything said in a western to be obscene cursing? Well, it seems like the writers for this series either can't think of what the cast should actually say. Maybe they think people don't talk much other than to curse, and this means there's little space for a plot to develop. It's a pity, as this series otherwise could be good.
  • The acting and scenery is okay, but not great.
  • Watch your language, Oct. 18, 2005
  • By S. W. Harris—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • This may repeat what others have said, but DO NOT buy this series if you or the recipient will be offended by much too frequent use of the f word and other expletives. I ordered this for a brother in law who does not have internet access and he is really upset about the language and would like to return the product. But as one on DVD has been opened he would get ½ his money back. I do not know why the socalled entertainment industry has to go overboard on expletives, probably the writers have not matured over their teen age years.
  • Crap!!!!!!, Nov. 6, 2005
  • By K. M. Blanchard “The real word!” (Guam)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • Too grim, too depressing!
  • And there's a lot of bad language!
  • I also think that the bad language expressed in this production was not as real as some people might say it was for that time period!
  • But excepting bad language in this production is one thing, but it doesn't necessary mean that it makes the production any more worthy of being a hit show.
  • Also the other thing I didn't like about the show was in how badly they treated women.
  • Women in the wild west were a rare commodity, so they were often well respected and looked after, but in this depiction there was nothing but disrespect!
  • So how real was this depiction??
  • Not very. Give this a miss!
  • After seeing the first five episodes I can now see why this never won any awards. I never finished it myself and have gone on to better things! I am now very weary of those 5 star reviews that I come across all the time!
  • A total waste of 74.00 dollars!
  • Dead wood indeed, Jun. 7, 2005
  • By Canto37 (Washington, D.C.)—See all my reviews
  • Oh, why can I not give this zero stars? Any attempt at accurate historical portrayal here is overshadowed by the need to outshadow current Hollywood trends. Sure, there's enough swearing and sex to make it “seem” like the good ol' wild west, but that aside, the plots wear thin and trite. After one or two episodes, it's easy to spot that the title “Deadwood” is quite apt.
  • Deadwood—The “F” Word, Feb. 21, 2005
  • By Billy J. Locke—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • If you like the “f” word, you'll love Deadwood. Otherwise, it's just trash and a tremendous waste of money!
  • Should call it Trashwood!, Mar. 3, 2005
  • By D. White “Billy” (North Carolina)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • What an awful show, it really insults a persons intelligence, how difficult is it to write nothing but cussing over and over. Obviously the show is out to attract a very immature audience that thinks cursing is cool. Stay far away from TRASHWOOD!!
  • The worst western I've seen in decades!, Apr. 1, 2005
  • By Timothy VM “TVM” (Camino, Calif. USA)—See all my reviews
  • I watched only the first two episodes. What trash! The dialogue was ridiculous. I have no problems with the use of “bad” language in movies, but this was extremely juvenile! I would guess that at least half the sentences include the F word at least once. It was so gratuitous, e.g., “I ain't f*cking goin' down stairs!” The acting was ok, but it must have been hard for the actors to keep a straight face with the asinine dialogue.
  • The story line was very weak.
  • Pathetic and Disgusting, Apr. 25, 2005
  • By Oliver Twist—See all my reviews
  • This presentation of the old west is nothing more than deranged. The profanity is incalculable. Even if there were moments of such filth in reality, this presentation in a television performance is pathetic and completely unartistic. One may as well be listening to an adult only Rap CD.
  • Since we were not there to know the old west characters, my guess is that the foul mouths portrayed exist only in the minds of the writers and producers of “Deadwood”. The creaters of this HBO series certainly did make something special, just like a baby makes something special for mommy and daddy. The closest this DVD should get to your house is the garbage can outside.
  • Watch it for more than 10 minutes and you're going to want to wash out your own mouth. Save your money and leave this piece of work in the world's biggest warehouse inventory.
  • F**king C**ks**ker . . . you people are morons!!, Feb. 24, 2005
  • By Lance Christian “game over man” (Alton, Ill.)—See all my reviews
  • (REAL NAME)
  • The 21st century will be forever documented in history as the age of stupidity. When people like Eminem are awarded as artistic genuises, reality tv gets the highest ratings and crap like this is considered superebly written, there is something seriously wrong with society.
  • To the ones who say that this takes place in the grittish lawless west, and everybody talked like that and it sets the mood, I say that you obviously aren't that big of a fan of western movies. John Wayne acted in movies a hundred times better than this, and those films dealt with the same wicked lowlife villains. But did you hear him constantly saying F this and F that you Fing CSer?? The same goes for the mind numbingly dull and pointless sex scenes. Do we really need a lesbian bath scene in a western? It's all just another excuse for Hollywood to justify this CRAP as “art”. I have to laugh at all the people who are so guilable to buy into this.
  • If you really want to see a good western, watch “The Shootist” or any of the other John Wayne greats. Deadwood is for people with an IQ under 80.
  • It is 1950, and the market is not happy. From the summit of the economic system, it stares down upon America with a jaundiced eye. America's most important reason, its labor force, is incredibly unproductive, for one simple reason: Most women aren't employed. Homemakers work, of course, but they don't get paid for it, which means they add nothing to the GDP. And without a salary, the Market has no control over them at all. The Market cannot fire them, promote them, or move them to where it needs them most. They are basically off the economic grid. What an enormous opportunity cost! The Market ponders the situation like a general analyzing his battle plan. The primary objective is to take the woman, who is commonly a mother, out of the home and put her into an office. Standing in the way are several defenses that must be overcome. At the deepest levels, mothers are attached to their children.

And so it is that the Wall Street MBAs united with Academia's MFAs to erase the Natural Mythologies in which women were women, and men were men, as Joseph Campbell lamented Porn and postmodern literature were used to sabotage the soul of young women, as many strip joints were put out of business, as now one could go out grinding and get a lap dance for free. Shows such as Sex and the City taught women to value the material as opposed to the spiritual. Written by a gay man, the show taught women to behave like gay men, and have sex freely and without commitment.

The glory of this video game is that it would allow children to again have mothers, and in having mothers, they have fathers too. This video game would allow the first person shooter to roam the sets of TV Shows such as Sex and the city, and shoot the producers, instead of innocent prostitutes and pedestrians.

Paul Stiles talks about the strategies of market feminism:

• • 1) Stress need for women to liberate themselves. Depict the current existence of the housewife as negative. 2) Focus women on individual self-interest. Deny that they need men. 3) Equate career success with a woman's personal value. 4) Undermine the value of the nuclear family. 5) Discredit the importance of motherhood. Position it as a myth created by men and clergy to subordinate women. 6) Undermine importance of early bonding between mother and child. 7) Take children out of hands of mothers. 8) Overcome resistance by recruiting key supporters and suppressing debate. 9) Once a critical mass of men is reached, declare we can never go back. 10) Above all, detach issue from moral truth and make it purely political.

And so you get what we have here—fat and happy boomers with houses bolstered by bubbles and pensions bolstered by the destruction of the Judeo Christian soul, the desecration of motherhood, and the exile of the family. Walk the halls of academia, and you will see all the boomers, celebrating their vast triumphs, blind to their wicked emptiness, as they quietly execute rising poets and prophets, instead preferring feminist porn and stories about video taping anal sex without first asking the girl. I have never seen so many so rich in pretense, and so poor in spirit. The only thing missing from the Hell they have created is the fire, and this game allows one to take a flamethrower to the church of postmodernism—the University. And as they kicked and tortured and beat the poets and prophets, now it's their turn to feel Justice.

Millions of books have been written about culture's decline, and this video game is superior over the prior art as it allows the player to do something about it. So often it is stated that film and literature is a superior art form over video games, but postmodern film and literature is debilitating, paralyzing, dark, and dervish. The rising generation shall far prefer playing this game than watching dressup fantasies and costume parties such as Kingdom of Heaven, Brokeback Mountain, Troy, and Alexander. This game brings to life the spirit of Sergio Leone's glorious westerns—the spirit of that Old Testament God who doesn't just sit around chanting, but parts oceans, and then lets them swallow up the evil Pharaoh and every last one of his men, as they give chase to Moses.

Paul Stiles continues,

• • The industrialization of the homemaker was only the opening salvo in the Market's attack on the family structure. The nuclear family is defined by two critical bonds: the marital bond between husband and wife, and the parental bond between parents and children. In a functional family, these bonds are moral, not productive. They are forms of love. But love is not a market principle, which means that the organization of the nuclear family was simply not as productive as it could be. Once the two-income family left the front door open, the Market thus invaded the home and attacked the traditional bonds within it, triggering what sociologists call “family breakdown,” a pathology that, like the impact of stress on the body, has caused a chain-reaction of damage throughout our society. p. 63

This video game would allow the player to shoot anyone who values market values over moral values. Flamethrowers, chainsaws, and BFGs will seal the fate of all deconstructionists, postmodernists, liars, and haters. See a professor quoting Focault? Shoot them. Hear a rapper belittling women? Shoot them. See a Wall Street banker hyping and lying? Shoot him dead, and then take a flamethrower and burn down his building for once and for all. Do as Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

The present invention will afford:

A video game which has characters that have ideas, ideologies and philosophies, where said ideas, ideologies, and philosophies are manifested in the evolution of the game world.

A video game wherein characters speak words reflecting said ideologies and philosophies.

Wherein said ideologies may be rooted in historical ideologies and philosophies.

Where the player character can choose whether or not to interact with characters based on their ideologies.

Where the player character can choose whether or not to shoot characters based on their ideologies.

Where the player character can choose whether or not to shoot in game characters based upon the words they speak.

Where the world evolves depending on the ideologies that are allowed to live.

Where the in-game, open-ended world evolves depending on the ideas and ideologies that are killed.

Where the in-game, open-ended world evolves depending on which characters the character interacts with.

Where the in-game, open-ended world devolves when collectivist ideologies prevail.

Where the in-game, open-ended world is exalted when judeo-christian ideologies prevail.

Where the character is murdered by collectivists when he fails to kill the collectivist characters.

Wherein the video game world brings to live literary works such as Orwell's animal farm.

Wherein the video game brings to life the result of political campaigns.

Wherein the video game brings to live novels such as Atlas Shrugged, 1984, and A Brave New World.

Wherein the video game brings to life Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Wherein the video game brings to life Autumn Rangers.

Wherein the video game brings to live economic theories and free markets versus socialistic conflicts.

Wherein the video game world will devolve in a physical manner when communism and collectivism take hold. The video game world will devolve in a physical manner including, but not limited to, dreary buildings, increased drinking, long lines waiting for materials and food and goods, a police state, martial law, less freedom, walls, banned books, banned thoughts, and banned art.

The video game world will devolve when those who espouse communistic tendencies are allowed to dominate.

The video game may also allow the first person player to win the world over via speaking ideologies and arguing their point, trying to convince the population of the virtues of leading via virtue.

The video game will allow the optimum blend of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism to prevail in the world. The video game will allow the player to fight for the high morals expressed in The Odyssey, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

Versions of the video game would allow one to fight for the ideals expressed in The Book of Matthew and/or the Apology.

Versions of the video game would allow one to fight for the ideals expressed in The Book of Matthew and/or the Apology, wherein one may actually save Socrates or Jesus.

The video game will allow classical liberal, libertarian, collectivist, and other ideologies to face off in a world where ideas have consequences, and where the world actually evolves according to the prevailing ideals.

Imagine shooting the collectivists, bureaucrats, and tyrants in novels such as Atlas Shrugged, or A Brave New world, and thusly realizing an in-game world where prosperity and peace reign.

Imagine a video game that allowed the player to live-out the themes in novels about dystopias.

Imagine a video game that allowed players to live out the theme in the greatest dystopia of them all—the postmodern dystopia which achieves dystopia by lying and hyping the opposite of what is true, and redefining words for short-term profits, while long-term profits and trust are sacrificed. In such a game one would be able to shoot the pomo hipsters who are killing the classical judeo context from within, while simultaneously supporting the terrorists who are attacking it from without, and even going further in inciting the terrorists to attack the United States by exporting the degradations of our culture far and wide. The pomo hipsters catch the honest man, the soldier, in the cross-fire, and send them forth to fight for the classic America, all the while furthering the postmodern America and imposing the postmodern America throughout the world. Imagine a video game that would allow one to fight both the enemies without and the enemies within, as referenced by Dinesh D'souza.

Imagine a video game that brought to life the whole premise underlying deeper realities of civilizations—ideas have consequences. By killing of certain ideals and ideas, whether with guns, or argument, or inspiration, or art, or other forms, one would be able to win the game and save the world. Fascism, communism, postmodernism and other isms could all be fought, and the game world could signify success with elements including a renaissance, peace and prosperity, exalted art, pink floyd and the beatles instead of myspace bands and lawyer fanboys, Shakespeare and the Bible instead of postmodern gobbedly gook, intact families instead of divided families, epic mythology instead of crass materialism, Homer and classic westerns instead of Paris Hilton, and freedom instead of slavery. Indeed, by shooting all the postmodern decliners and pomo-hipsters who sell out culture via irony and conceited corruption, the game would allow a far higher reality and engaging experience to be witnessed. Such a game would be superior to spore—I heard the lead designer speak about storytelling in games—and he never once mentioned the moral premise—the moral premise that is at the heart and soul of The Odyssey and the Bible and Dante's Inferno—the most epic of all epics. The present invention would thus allow the values of the classic western to manifest themselves for the very first time in the realm of the video game.

All of the various states and forms of states contemplated in Book VIII of Plato's Republic may be brought to life with this video game:

Book VIII

And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common; and that all education and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings?

That, replied Glaucon, has been acknowledged.

Yes, I said; and we have further acknowledged that the governors, when appointed themselves, will take their soldiers and place them in houses such as we were describing, which are common to all, and contain nothing private, or individual; and about their property, you remember what we agreed?

Yes, I remember that no one was to have any of the ordinary possessions of mankind; they were to be warrior athletes and guardians, receiving from the other citizens, in lieu of annual payment, only their maintenance, and they were to take care of themselves and of the whole State.

True, I said; and now that this division of our task is concluded, let us find the point at which we digressed, that we may return into the old path.

There is no difficulty in returning; you implied, then as now, that you had finished the description of the State: you said that such a State was good, and that the man was good who answered to it, although, as now appears, you had more excellent things to relate both of State and man. And you said further, that if this was the true form, then the others were false; and of the false forms, you said, as I remember, that there were four principal ones, and that their defects, and the defects of the individuals corresponding to them, were worth examining. When we had seen all the individuals, and finally agreed as to who was the best and who was the worst of them, we were to consider whether the best was not also the happiest, and the worst the most miserable. I asked you what were the four forms of government of which you spoke, and then Polemarchus and Adeimantus put in their word; and you began again, and have found your way to the point at which we have now arrived.”—Plato's Republic.

So it is that the ideas of the individuals have consequences, and the state evolves according to those ideas in reality; and so too shall it be in the video games, as individual ideas, manifested in action, will lead to various forms of state, as well as corrupted forms for the corrupt individual. No video game has ever brought Book VIII of Plato's Republic to life, nor any of Plato's philosophy, nor any work of deeper soul that manifests the truth that ideas have consequences.

Concerning the book Everything Bad is Good For You, Publisher's Weekly writes, “Worried about how much time your children spend playing video games? Don't be, advises Johnson—not only are they learning valuable problem-solving skills, they'd probably do better on an IQ test than you or your parents could at their age . . . . With the same winning combination of personal revelation and friendly scientific explanation he displayed in last year's Mind Wide Open, Johnson shatters the conventional wisdom about pop culture as pabulum, showing how video games, television shows and movies have become increasingly complex. Furthermore, he says, consumers are drawn specifically to those products that require the most mental engagement, from small children who can't get enough of their favorite Disney DVDs to adults who find new layers of meaning with each repeated viewing of Seinfeld.”

So it is that children aren't playing enough video games.

Amazon writes, “In his fourth book, Everything Bad Is Good for You, iconoclastic science writer Steven Johnson (who used himself as a test subject for the latest neurological technology in his last book, Mind Wide Open) takes on one of the most widely held preconceptions of the postmodern world—the belief that video games, television shows, and other forms of popular entertainment are detrimental to Americans' cognitive and moral development. Everything Good builds a case to the contrary that is engaging, thorough, and ultimately convincing.”

So it is that we are not playing enough video games. By allowing players to shoot pomo-hipsters who come up with silly books such as Everything Bad is Good For You, this present invention will result in a vastly enhanced demand for video games.

The book Blink teaches us the fiatocracy's supreme wisdom and virtue of not thinking too much, and the present invention will bolster this supreme wisdom in the realm of video games—pomo hipsters will be shot on site. Hesitate and think about it, you lose. Shoot from the hip, and you win.

John Wayne, also known as “The Duke,” said, “A man ought to do what he thinks is right. If everything isn't black and white, I say, ‘Why the hell not?’” And there you have it—the black & white 45 SURF logo.

And this invention brings to life the John Wayne spirit—fighting for good over evil.

In The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, Jack Bogle talks about that higher battle: “The most recent episode witnessed the culmination of an era in which our business corporations and our financial institutions, working in tacit harmony, corrupted the traditional nature of capitalism, shattering both confidence in the markets and the accumulated wealth of countless American families. Something went profoundly wrong, fundamentally and pervasively, in corporate America . . . . At the root of the problem, in the broadest sense, was a societal change aptly described by these words from the teacher Joseph Campbell: “In medieval times, as you approached the city, your eye was tyaken by the Cathedral. Today, it's the towers of commerce. It's business, business, business.” We had become what Campbell called a bottom-line society. But our society came to measure the wrong bottom line: form over substance, prestige over virtue, money over achievement, charisma over character, the ephemeral over the enduring, even mammon over God.”—The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, by John C. Bogle

This video game would allow one to fight the good fight—the Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, which must be preceded by a literary renaissance, for it must be of the spirit to save the flesh, as General Macarthur said.

Possible Embodiments of Present Invention

Imagine a gameworld wherein the player's duty was to protect the founding documents of civilization, including the Great Books and the Bible—The Declaration of Independence and The US Constitution.

Ideas have consequences, and the burgeoning government's quest for power leads them to take down the Ten Commandments from courts and Federal Buildings. They deconstruct the first and second amendments, and make sure that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are no longer taught in the schools, or at least not in their proper context of the great books and classics. Abortion, debt, and war rule the world; as the innocent are massacred.

Our hero has sworn to protect and defend the United States Constitution, and so they go about doing just that, in this open-ended world.

Enemy players try to take the ten-commandments down from courthouses, and our hero must stop them. He can try reasoning with them with a dialogue tree, but if this fails, and if they try to forcibly remove him, he has to fight back and shoot them in the spirit of Revolutionary War and Declaration of Independence, when so many gave their lives for the ideals underlying freedom.

In another embodiment, enemy players would try to remove the word God from every Washington monument; and they would try to remove the Declaration of Independence from the schools as it contains the word God and Creator. Our hero would have to stop them.

Ideas have consequences; and if our hero fails, tyranny will ensue. Taxes will be raised to fight foreign wars on foreign shores, and civilization will come under assault from all corners. Families will break up and our hero's love interest, or sister, or mother, will find their way into prostitution or be forced into prostitution. She will be used and abused by the assholes favored by the feminist system, who deem metrosexual assholery superior to rugged, deep-seated manhood.

Further Objects and Advantages of the Current Invention over Prior Art: Building upon the Great Books: Enhanced Dialogue and Action Trees Confirming to Plots of the Classics

Video games are superficial and soulless. Video game writing is awful. Do not take my word for it—this is echoed in hundreds of articles everywhere; but the current fanboys—both in Wall Street Hedge Funds and behind video games, are incapable of endowing the games with classical, epic soul. This is because classical, epic soul gets in the way of their dumbed-down new world order. There—I said it. So go ahead and make my day with a GOW fanboy chainsaw. Or kill some cops and civilians, or hire and kill a hooker, or kill the Constitution some more, a few more million unborn. But you ought to know, by now, that there is that higher showdown, just as there is ample opportunity for higher, exalted games, and the 45 Revolver only glows gold for those who say and do the right things. And you've got to ask yourself one question—do you feel lucky?

• • http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/006462.html: The Writing in Video Games is Absolutely Abysmal : Matt Peckham writes, “Well it is. I can't help but see it, I think on at least some level you know it, and now Lost producer and lead writer Damon Lindeloff has the guts to bluntly say it. Bravo, I say. Here he is reacting to video game TV and movie tie-ins in an article suggesting video games hastened the demise of the writer's guild strike.
  • We have that Lost game coming out soon, and having taken a closer look at how that industry works, I fear the Lost franchise will be spoiled to the point where we'll have to take it off the air. Loose ends and all. I am truly amazed at how our creative products can be ruined by interactive media. The writing in video games is absolutely abysmal.*
  • (Brace for a rant.)
  • (Okay. Buckled up and ready?)
  • Now when I wholeheartedly agree with Lindeloff that video game writing is largely in the un-flushed toilet, I'm not talking about Mario. I don't mean Donkey Kong Country, or Geometry Wars. People don't play Pac-Man for the epic dotty intrigue or Smash TV for its shallow mockery of entertainment TV. This isn't an indictment of video games in general or the places where good writing's managed to peek through in spite of the considerable odds stacked against it. The majority of video games (casual, played online, mostly by women) in fact don't have plots or need protagonists or involve much engagement with story-driven text at all.
  • But that's not what Lindeloff's talking about.
  • I think it's safe to say he's referring to cinematic games. Games which, by definition, “have qualities characteristic of motion pictures.” Games where the story inseparably informs the gameplay. Games that borrow wholesale (or at least attempt to, amateurishly) from TV and movies at both the formal theoretical and technical-fictive levels. Games with lengthy intros, cutscenes with elaborate motion capture mechanics, or all those blurb-tastic “dozens of hours of voice acting!” Games whose inceptive stages look an awful lot like the ones that birth your average TV show or film. Exhaustive storyboards. Green-screens. Writers in rooms or chat sessions or on conference calls collaboratively hashing out scripts or last minute script changes.
  • Not to excuse movies and TV shows. They have their ample percentage of crap writing too, and Lindeloff needs to do a little looking in the mirror (on behalf of his medium, anyway) before throwing stones. Lost has its own share of crappy episodes, and Lindeloff knows it.
  • But compared to video games? Not even in the same league, and don't even attempt an equivalency argument (it just makes us look stupid). Well, not unless your idea of good writing includes stuff like R. A. Salvatore and Rhonda Byrne, in which case that may explain a lot of the problem. There's a reason those two won't be winning any storytelling awards, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the sort of literary elitism Stephen King so eloquently trashed in his 2003 National Book Awards acceptance speech.
  • Which, you could argue, actually makes the point by roundabout: Game writing has the opposite problem of the one King was tackling during that important and wise speech. Game writing is way too easy on itself. And so are we—too easy on chop-shop digital scribes and translators—as gamers.”—http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/006462.html

Dialogue trees exist in games such as Mass Effect, but they amble around and lead to victory no matter if one chooses the moral, amoral, or immoral path—one can play as a Paragon or Renegade, but one can win either way. A Lesbian love scene is celebrated by the fanboys as the pinnacle of artistic achievement.

This present patent suggests a vast improvement over the prior art—over games such as Mass Effect—this present patent proposes games that have moral consequences for choices regarding actions taken and words spoken. This patent improves upon the Mass Effect dialogue tree by providing a dialogue tree wherein the moral content effects the outcome of the game. Furthermore, an embodiment of this patent enhances game writing and the action/dialogue tree by mapping the game to classics such as The Odyssey and Inferno, wherein the correct choices at the correct times; the correct dialogue and the correct action, whether given by dialogue trees or action trees or some other method, lead to victory and adherence to the plot. For instance, in The Odyssey video game, the richest language and plot are presented when the character makes the choices our hero Odysseus made.

• • In The moral cost of video games, Violence is bad enough. But here's the worst part.—http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0107/p09s02-coop.html?page=2 By Matthew Devereux, from the Jan. 7, 2008 edition, Matthew Devereux writes,
  • The moral cost of video games
  • Violence is bad enough. But here's the worst part.
  • By Matthew Devereux
  • from the Jan. 7, 2008 edition
  • Page 1 of 2
  • PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND—In the controversial new video game “Manhunt 2,” you're required to sneak up behind innocent victims, hit them over the head with a garden spade and then use that same weapon to decapitate, them. The whole thing is pretty graphic, because the game has, well, pretty graphics. As blood gushes, you're supposed to feel satisfied that you're ready for the next challenge.
  • To some, this scenario captures everything wrong about video games. “They're too violent,” detractors say. “And they glamorize violence. Children might be tempted to copy them.” While this is an understandable concern, it misses more obvious problems with many video games today: primarily, an utter lack of moral consequence.
  • Countless studies have tested the alleged links between virtual violence and its real counterpart. Conclusions vary, but I certainly don't need a panel of academics to explain to me that the teen across the street isn't going to attack me with a garden spade.
  • Still, if you're a parent, the sheer intensity of violence in many games today ought to be a valid concern. You wouldn't let your children view online pornography, so why let them decapitate people in a video game?
  • Yet many parents buy their children games rated inappropriate for anyone under 17. Why? Perhaps it's a hangover attitude from the “Pac-Man” past, when all video games were presumed to be harmless fun. Or maybe they just want their kids to think they're cool. Whatever the reason, there's clearly a disconnect between the level of parental angst and parental tolerance.
  • One of many dubious arguments against violence in video games is that children find it hard to distinguish between “real” and “virtual” situations.
  • If that's true, is CNN not a more pernicious peddler of unsavory material for kids? When kids turn on the TV and see footage of soldiers shooting each other for real, is there any substantial difference between that and playing a first-person shooter game?
  • Years ago, after the tragic shootings in Columbine, the news media were quick to lay blame at the game industry's door. Could they not as easily have turned that criticism on themselves?
  • What's surprising about the media's obsession with violence in games is that it overlooks more serious lapses in values. By concentrating on the bloodthirsty and dramatic, they're ignoring influences that are much more harmful to children long term.
  • Take, for instance, the idea of ruthless competition, that for every winner there are necessarily losers. Regardless of what game you're playing, the message is almost always the same: Do whatever it takes to win, even at the expense of everyone else.
  • Imagine if that were the moral of every movie and TV show you ever watched. Would the world be a better or worse place? Would you let your children play a game that promoted such a dog-eat-dog mentality?
  • Fundamentally, most games operate within a moral framework: good versus evil (or vice versa). But what games conspicuously lack is moral consequence. Once you've killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that's usually the end of it—you'll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.
  • Every bit of mayhem becomes just another item on a video-game to-do list. Games ignore moral consequence and emotional nuance to focus on the purely visceral. There are only two types of decisions you can really make: the strategically correct one or the strategically incorrect one. There is no “right” or “wrong”—only success or failure.
  • Unbridled competition combined with no moral consequence eventually leads to a lack of compassion. And without compassion, humanity is lost.
  • What games risk instilling, not just in kids, but in anyone who plays them, is a kind of sociopathy: a dearth of conscience. Whether this might be imitated outside of gaming is beside the point. What we should be asking ourselves is if we really want to spend ever more time playing things that encourage these values. That's a moral question, one that's easily sidelined in favor of simply having fun, but it's something we all must consider as the pastime grows more popular.
  • I'm not calling for stricter regulation of the video-game industry. Rather, I hope to widen the debate to include issues that might not be considered if we believe the sensational, trivial hysteria of the media. By concentrating so heavily on the immediate (and short-term) effects of video-game violence, we're distracted from discussing more important moral dimensions. It's time for parents to stop asking what is appropriate for their children and to start asking what is morally right.”—from http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0107/p09s02-coop.html?page=2

The present invention, combined with earlier inventions by Dr. Elliot McGucken, would provide novel methods and means for video games with ideas that consequences and moral consequences and thus exalted action, story, educational value, cultural value, and more. The above article states, “Once you've killed someone, stolen something, or blown up a building, that's usually the end of it—you'll rarely get to see the emotional impact of your actions on the characters around you.” This video game will allow the player to witness the results. Let the feminist movement triumph, and abortion and porn reign supreme, for women like porn far more than men do. Men just watch it, while women are in it. Men pay for it, and women are paid; along with the credit card companies who process the transactions as we shift from the gold standard to the soulless porn standard. This video game would allow the player to fight for the gold standard—to fight for civilization, and truth, and honor, and marriage, and kill all the false suitors as Odysseus did.

Many argue that video games are too violent, but I would argue that they are not violent enough. In The Odyssey, when Odysseus gets on home, he slays all the suitors in his home, leaving a bloody mess. Then he has all the whoring women clean it up, and he has the women hung. Now that would be an awesome cut-scene, born by the correct action and dialogue, but the snarky fanboys just want to hire prostitutes and kill them in GTS, or level up in WoW on ultimately meaningless campaigns designed to enrich Universal.

This present patent would allow a player to first consider who and who not to kill amongst the suitors. If they grant too much mercy to the wrong suitors—to the suitors who were neutral, but did nothing to defend Odysseus's home, those suitors, who the player lets live, may turn on the player and kill them. On the other hand, showing mercy to true friends, born by the content of their character, is rewarded. And too, the player can consider the correct action after they have killed all the suitors—they can choose whether or not to have the whoring women clean up the mess and have them killed, or just have them clean up the mess. If they let the whoring women live, the whoring women will take over Odysseus's home via subterfuge and deceit, and defeat the Great Warrior.

Imagine the vastly enhanced gaming experiences this present patent would provide. Classics could be combined, drawing in Plato, Aristotle, and more.

The present invention will foster and exalt:

1. A system and method for providing a dialogue or action tree in a video game where moral choices underly the choices presented

2. The method in 1 where moral choices lead to victory including but not limited to winning loved ones, winning one's home, winning freedom, winning one's country, and amoral or immoral choices lead to defeat, including losing one's freedom, losing one's country, losing one's home.

3. The method in 1 where the dialogue and/or action trees are based upon to the plot points of great books and classics, such as the odyssey, the iliad, hamlet, biblical stories, and more—for instance, what if Moses hadn't smashed the ten commandments?

4. The method in 1 where the dialogue and/or action trees are based upon famous historical events including the American Revolution, where one could study the consequence

5. The method in 1 where when players follow the course of action of the protagonists in epic stories and great books and classics, they are rewarded with the rich and triumphant, even when tragically cathartic, stories of the great books and classics. And when they fail to make the correct decisions regarding dialogue or action, they lose the plot of the epic classics, and are presented with a dumbed down, degraded version as Odysseus loses Penelope and Beatrice loses Dante.

6. The method in 1 where when players follow the course of action of the protagonists in epic stories and great books and classics but performed in contemporary contexts with contemporary language and settings, they are rewarded with the rich and triumphant, even when tragically cathartic, stories of the great books and classics. And when they fail to make the correct decisions regarding dialogue or action, they lose the plot of the epic classics, and are presented with a dumbed down, degraded version as Odysseus loses Penelope and Beatrice loses Dante, just as marriage is dying in our own culture.

To illustrate the fanboyism, Here is a conversation I started at the Mass Effect forums as rangermccoy:

• http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=600077&forum=104
  • Can you win as either a Paragon or Renegade?
  • rangermccoy
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 06:19 PM
  • Can you beat the game as either a Paragon or Renegade? Does the Paragon finish ahead, or does the Renegade finish ahead? Which one is easier to win with? What are the similarities/differences?
  • Thanks!
  • Edited By rangermccoy on Nov. 22, 2007 18:19
  • Pileyourbodies
  • Game Owner
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 9 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 06:22 PM
  • you can win as either one . . . i wouldn't say either come out ahead.
  • zombie flayer
  • Joined: 9 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 06:26 PM
  • Of course you can beat it with either one.
  • The difference is paragons can charm people in conversation while renegades use intimidation to achieve the same result.
  • Each has their own subplots that can be done as well.
  • rangermccoy
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 06:47 PM
  • Is there ultimately any difference in the overall world depending on whether one plays as a renegade or a paragon?
  • For that matter, is there any video game out there where one's moral alignment determines the ultimate outcome of the game, and the ultimate state of the game world?
  • Sigma Hyperion
  • Game Owner
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 13 Nov. 2007
  • From: The Verge Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 07:01 PM
  • Nope.
  • That's kind of an important distinction between “Paragon/Renegade” and more traditional “Good/Evil”.
  • By definition both Paragon and Renegade achieve the exact same ultimate goal. The only difference is the method in which you go about it. In the end, the universe will be the same and, though your actions to achieve it will certainly be different, your kindness/ruthlessness won't be on a galactic enough scale to actually impact the entire galaxy. The end overshadows the means.
  • Edited By Sigma Hyperion on Nov. 22, 2007 19:01
  • rangermccoy
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 07:07 PM
  • Thanks!
  • But is there any video game out there where one's moral alignment determines the ultimate outcome of the game, and the ultimate state of the game world?
  • I can't come up with one . . . but perhaps there is . . .
  • Happy turkeyday everyone.
  • Servo Starwind
  • Game Owner
  • SW: KotOR Xbox
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 23 Sep. 2007
  • From: Solstite Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 07:29 PM
  • Theres more than 2 endings.
  • p.s that is the most noobish question I've ever seen on here!
  • rangermccoy
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 07:33 PM
  • Thanks Servo,
  • But is there any video game out there where one's moral alignment determines the ultimate outcome of the game, and the ultimate state of the game world?
  • I can't come up with one . . . but perhaps there is . . .
  • Happy turkeyday Servo!
  • Sigma Hyperion
  • Game Owner
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 13 Nov. 2007
  • From: The Verge Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 07:53 PM
  • I don't know of any game where one's moral alignment significantly alters the ending, but I know of games where one's choices can change the ending of the game, and the standing of the game world afterwards, in widely differing ways. You could call the choices at the end of Deus Ex moral choices, they are just as “moral” as those in BioWare games, but the game doesn't have a morality mechanic of any sort. And the choices you made at the end of that game completely changed the world in completely different ways depending on the choice.
  • Unfortunately, though Deus Ex allowed many choices in the game up to that point, the choices you had made earlier in the game had no bearing on which choices you could make at the end.
  • deaf and dumb
  • Game Owner
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 9 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 07:57 PM
  • to answer your question, try a game called Fable.
  • i believe there's a sequel coming out soon.
  • rangermccoy
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007 Posted: Thursday, 22 Nov. 2007 08:06 PM
  • Thanks for the Fable reference, but I'm not sure Fable qualifies:
  • Even if you're evil in Fable, can't you still “win?”
  • Does it really matter to the world at large?
  • http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006_—06_—01_archive.html says
  • “When last year Edward Castronova argued on Terra Nova that Horde characters in World of Warcraft are evil, he was widely ridiculed. There is no “evil” in World of Warcraft, players of either faction are constantly on quests that are helping somebody else. Whether you are a holy paladin or a demon-summoning warlock, it doesn't change the way in which you help the farmer get the deed to his farm back from the evil bandits. There is no moral choice, no option to sell the deed to the highest bidder instead of returning it for a lousy reward. Even the undead are “good” undead, fighting the evil scourge undead.
  • If a game like Black & White, or Knights of the Old Republic, or Fable, gives you the option to play good or evil, that is just a thinly disguised way to enable you to play the game twice. You chose evil or good by what you think is more useful to beat the game, and then if you play it again, you chose the other side, just to see something new. It is not a moral choice, but a tactical one. We don't feel that burning down a virtual village in a game world and killing the inhabitants is an evil act, after all those are just colored pixels that don't feel anything. Advancing in the game is the most important, even that means that in the next mission we have to throw Napalm on that Vietnamese village to continue.
  • All that ends us in a total inability between gamers and anti-game advocates or politicians to understand each other. The gamer picks up minor points that the criticism got wrong, like “there are no points in GTA for shooting and raping hookers”, and fails to see that the criticism otherwise wasn't all that unjustified. Most of what you do in GTA *is* a depiction of very, very evil behavior. By the time you finished the game you have committed more crimes than any known peace-time gangster. The anti-gamer fails to see that all these crimes are virtual, and don't lead to you going out and doing the same in real life.
  • “Evil” has become a joke. In Dragon Quest 8 one of the heroes has a special combat move with whirling axes, called “Axes of Evil”, har, har, nice joke on George Bush. But I wonder if all this making light of evil, all this gaming without true moral choices, is not making the medium of video games poorer. Fact is that in the real world there is real evil, guys like Sadam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, or Robert Mugabe aren't just “misunderstood”. And evil isn't limited to crazy dictators, there are people everywhere that like to be cruel to others. And ordinary people have to make hard moral choices sometimes, between good and evil. Previous entertainment media understood that, and made good and evil a major recurring theme in many books and movies. Only video games present the end of evil, a world in which neither good nor evil matters, where “evil” is just a thin plot element to explain why you as the hero have to go out and kill that boss. We end up with players in online games doing evil things that actually hurt real people, if just in a minor way, and not even realizing the difference. GTA won't turn anybody into a mass murderer, but it is hard to believe that hundreds of hours of inconsequential evil and violence should have no effect whatsoever on how you perceive evil and violence in the real world.
  • “—from: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006_—06_—01_archive.html
  • skippyisthedevil
  • Game Owner
  • SW: KotOR Xbox
  • Jade Empire
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007
  • From: Miami, Fla. Posted: Sunday, 25 Nov. 2007 04:49 PM
  • Because video games are for the most part based on fiction, morality can be very skewed. GTA for instance has the lead character performing all sorts of criminal acts that most of us would consider immoral, however in the context of the game they are perfectly acceptable. Ultimately since morality is based on societal norms and video games often eschew those same norms, real morality is very hard to replicate in a video game. In Fable and KOTOR you are able to finish the game differently depending on the choices you make but it is mostly a cosmetic change. I for one enjoy playing both ways, as an evil character I can do and say things I would never do in real life and as a good character I can sacrifice and hold my self up to a much higher virtue than I would expect from any one in the real world. A game where morality definitively changed the world around you would be neat, but I'm not sure how much appeal it would have for the average gamer.
  • “Can I be buried here among the dead with room to honor me here in the end?”
  • Coheed and Cambria
  • rangermccoy
  • Joined: 22 Nov. 2007 Posted: Sunday, 25 Nov. 2007 07:23 PM
  • Thanks!
  • I agree “A game where morality definitively changed the world around you would be neat, but I'm not sure how much appeal it would have for the average gamer.”
  • But I think that such a game defines next-generation games.
  • Is there any game within which the player's morality changes the world? Where only by behaving in a moral manner can one complete the game or “win?” And where immorality eventually leads to the downfall and decline of the game world?
  • I'd love to play that game, if anyone knows of it.
  • Righteous Rage
  • Game Owner
  • Mass Effect
  • Joined: 10 Aug. 2007 Posted: Sunday, 25 Nov. 2007 07:31 PM
  • I thought this thread was gonna be about the end, haha. SPOILERZZZ
  • reiella
  • Game Owner
  • Joined: 9 Dec. 2002 Posted: Sunday, 25 Nov. 2007 07:38 PM
  • Quote: Posted Nov. 22, 2007 18:47 (GMT) by rangermccoy
  • Is there ultimately any difference in the overall world depending on whether one plays as a renegade or a paragon?
  • For that matter, is there any video game out there where one's moral alignment determines the ultimate outcome of the game, and the ultimate state of the game world?
  • With Mass Effect, there was a very definant decision that while you could pursue two different avenues, the Goal and Major Plot Points would remain the same. They gotta be able to market a sequel, and do it better than how the canonization of BG2 went for FR continuity . . . .

In light of the above telling conversation, this patent suggests a superior method for video games—video games that adhere to the classical, epic soul and spirit—video games which exalt and manifest the maxim that ideas have consequences.

This patent is actually related to the method for merchandising pricing in the gold price patent in that the gold standard protects the private property of savings against theft from the printing of money, and theft is immoral; and game characters that act immorally end up losing. Furthermore, morality is the keystone of all literature, just as it is the keystone of property rights.

DRM protects the private property of the artist and creator from vast corporations who benefit from the printing of money—who hire lawyers and MBAs with the printed money to come up with fancy contracts to screw the artists, and to often even manufacture artists such as Britney Spears and boy bands. This video game could allow players to play as Eminem, destroying boy bands, while also destroying the downloaders who steal his music, while also destroying the snarky, academic eggheads who have institutionalized theft both in the form of downloading and placing students into vast debts, as they produce the MBAs, central planners, and lawyers who fight and brownnose to sit close to the Fed's money Spigot in DC/Wall Street, as the government and business bureaucrats bleed into one, united in their love of printing money instead of working for it; their love for creating money out of thin air instead of creating art by blood, passion, and tears.

Furthermore, this patent salutes the Great Books and Classics wherein Moses smashes his ten commandments when he sees them worshipping the Golden Calf, deeming the Word of God to have greater value than Gold; and Achilles throws down his Golden Staff, deeming honor to have greater value than gold. So it is that the moral renaissance shall be.

To date one cannot play a game and fight for the Western Soul and be rewarded by hearing Socrates' Wisdom. To date, one cannot perform the classical ideals in the contemporary context. Another form of this patent—another embodiment—would be the classical ideals performed in a contemporary context, so that the same or similar action from the classics such as The Odyssey might be rendered in the present day and context. Fanboys are longing to be men, and there would be a vast audience for such games.

This patent may build on an earlier invention by Dr. Elliot McGucken. Players would be afforded the opportunity to make key decisions along plotlines of the Great Books, while residing in the living context of the Great Books and Classics.

Dialogue trees and action trees, as utilized in game such as Mass Effect, could be enhanced with the use of the Great Books and Classics. Choosing the correct dialogue and/or correct action could lead one down the correct and true plot of the classic. Points could be awarded for following the true path of the classics, for example in the case of Odysseus making all the right choices in resisting the temptations of the Lotus Eaters and Sirens, and killing the Cyclops, and saying all the right things to make it on home and kill all the suitors and win back Penelope; or in the case of Dante saying all the right things to Virgil and taking all the correct actions in walking through hell to be with Beatrice. The Great Books and Classics generally present us with heroes who make moral choices, which result in triumphant endings.

If a character chooses immoral or amoral action, they are taken down a different path that leads to failure; such as Odysseus never getting home.

Tragedies could also be handled with this game engine, as the correct choice and dialogue would ultimately lead to tragedy, but a cathartic tragedy; for Jesus died not for his meekness, but for his greatness. Socrates died not for his meekness, but for his greatness. Hamlet died not for his meekness, but for his nobility.

Today's movies, from Beowulf, to 3:10 to Yuma, to Atonement, to There Will be Blood all lack the redemption witnessed in the classic Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. In the original 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy lives and the bad guy goes to jail, but in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away free, as Hollywood Producers have recreated the movie in their own image, being that they are funded by Wall Street banks close to the money spigot.

The Great Books and classics all hinge about characters making moral choices and resisting temptations. The characters that succeed in doing this are eventually rewarded in a higher manner—they make it on home or profit in the long run. Even Hamlet is rewarded with his place at the forefront of Western Literature, with the most exalted conscience and consciousness. Imagine a tree of action that could take Hamlet down different paths. Imagine if he does get his revenge early; or imagine if he does kill himself. Within Hamlet we see the vast paradoxes and conflicts of life manifested; as the moral and ethical systems form Athens and Jerusalem battle themselves out, with even greater ferocity than the battle which lead Socrates to state that he could not defined virtue, and that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. So too is it with Hamlet—he is seeking the ideal of justice as Socrates did; he is seeking the ideal before enacting it; and he cannot find justice's ideal—not because he does not see enough, but because he sees too much. Imagine a video game that brought Hamlet to life by allowing the player to make choices both in dialogue and action. The correct choice would lead to Hamlet's brilliant soliloquies, and the incorrect choice would lead to a diminished plot, diminished dialogue, and a diminished end, lacking the cathartic nobility of the original play.

Imagine a video game that placed characters in the context of the great books and classics, and then spoke the original dialogue—matching the plot of the classic—when the character chose to follow an action parallel to the classic.

For instance, Odysseus would be offered the chance to have his men tie him to the mast when passing the Sirens, or he could choose to not be tied to the mast.

If he does not choose to be tied to the mast, he succumbs to the Siren's call and meets his demise. This could be shown in a cut-scene based on his choice. He could have further options presented in dealing with the Sirens.

If Odysseus chooses to be tied to the mast, he sails on by safely, and goes on to the next adventure.

Odysseus will be presented with choices that lead to branching avenues. If Odysseus chooses to fight the suitors too early upon arriving home in The Odyssey, he will lose. If he chooses the wrong dialogue, he will lose. If he discloses his identity at certain key points, and acts stronger as opposed to weaker, he will lose. If he chooses to disguise himself not as a beggar, but as someone more exalted, or himself, he will lose. Choosing the humbler path and staying away from temptation will result in his victory.

So it is that every plot point of every immortal classic could be integrated in this system so as to lend games depth and profundity.

In the case of Hamlet, Hamlet could be given options, such as to kill the King at major plot points. For instance, when Hamlet comes to the King confessing of the murder of Hamlet's father before the cross, Hamlet could choose to kill him or not kill him. Killing him would end the game with Hamlet going to hell, while not killing the King would end with Hamlet delivering the classical monologue.

As Dante walks through hell, he could choose various forms of interacting with Virgil—only one way that conforms to the true plot of the classic will lead him through hell. For instance, Dante could end up partaking in the same temptations which engulf his fellow men.

Players could be given points for adhering to the true plot of the classics, as that is generally the moral course of action. When players depart from the true plot of the classics through their errant choices, they could be penalized, or not receive points. So it is that those who adhere to the true course of the classics—those who make all the correct choices—will see victory and witness the greater art of the classics. Those who stray from the plot of the classics will ultimately lose—Odysseus will never make it on home, Dante will not make it through hell, or Hamlet will end abruptly, short of its greater glory.

4. System and Method for Female Video Game Characters With Soul and Virtue and Male Characters With Soul and Virtue:

Imagine video games that presented female characters with the depth of soul and spirit owned by classical characters such as Penelope, Beatrice, Mary Magdelane, the Virgin Mary, and The Mona Lisa.

Having female characters behave and act morally, while others don't, would provide a novel form of gameplay. For instance, in the Odyssey, Agamemnon's wife cheats on him, and the man she takes in ends up killing Agamemnon. This is contrasted to Penelope, who remains faithful throughout, thusly ensuring that Odysseus's life and home are preserved. So it is that in this novel form of video games, women will be shown on both sides of the moral premise, and not only that, but their moral choices will be fundamental to the eventual victory or defeat.

Opportunities abound for deeper, more profound female characters, as fanboys such as Cliffyb and Wyckyg are yet focusing on breasts, as Wired reports:

• • “Speaking to Wired.com at Microsoft's recent media event, the designer (above left) says that Epic Games is trying to make their upcoming Xbox 360 shooter more appealing to the casual audience. The game's female characters, he said, won't have “ginormous tits.” And the lauded kill-alien-swarms-with-a-buddy cooperative mode will let you adjust the game's difficulty on the fly depending on who's playing. How do you make a game girlfriend-friendly? You do jump-in, jump-out co-op. You have configurable difficulty settings for the other player. You have very cool and bad-ass main characters that have a very human side. And you make sure that the female characters in your game don't have ginormous tits and aren't bad stereotypes. What are the female characters in Gears 2 like? I've always made sure, working with the art department, that Anya is strong-willed but also very mother-like to the squad. She has a very modest chest and doesn't look like some sort of heavy metal movie fantasy.”—http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/05/cliffy-b-gears.html

Well, that is vast and resounding progress. Boobs are mentioned three times in the above passage, although nobody mentions the vast importance of the moral woman's character in the realm of classical, epic storytelling. No gaming expert has yet ever suggested that the ultimate woman character in a video game ought behave morally, like Penelope. In our dumbed-down, spectacle-driven society, morality is seen as a bad thing—the exact antithesis to art. And so the best the fanboys can do is make the in-game character's breast-size smaller. There is no mention of making them faithful, nor having them speak intelligently, nor making them weave and unweave a tapestry, as does Penelope, to keep the suitors at bay, while waiting faithfully for Odysseus. So it is that games have yet to achieve higher, classical, epic art. And so it is that this patent, by instilling deep ideas and ideals within the game's context and AI, will allow for superior gameplay.

Female Characters with Soul and Virtue: Every year Play Magazine publishes its Girls of Gaming collection which states at http://playmagazine.com/thegirlsofgaming/index.html, Girls of Gaming Vol. 5 “is jam packed with hotness from every corner of the gaming universe and when you sign up to go digital you'll get our 20-page Best-Of Girls of Gaming absolutely free, along with bonus mature content too hot for print. The print edition is something special as well, featuring embossed, spot varnished covers and top quality materials.” Year after year Play Magazine publishes this work, and year after year the industry creates games; but they are missing soul on both the masculine and feminine levels. A game that showed a character being seduced, but resisting, as did Penelope in The Odyssey, could enhance game play by inspiring and exalting the main character to make it on home. Imagine cut-scenes that showed women reading exalted poetry, or lines from Shakespeare' plays, representing virtues. They could be contrasted to evil women and temptresses throughout literature.

• 1. Imagine cut scenes that showed women acting with virtue to inspire the player to make it on home. For instance, seeing Penelope behaving virtuously and resisting the suitors could inspire the player to make it on back to the damsel in distress.
• 2. Imagine cut-scenes that showed men acting with virtue to inspire the female in-game-character to also act virtuous. For instance imagine a character of Penelope witnessing Odysseus's resistance of the Sirens, or his other noble actions and refusals of temptations.

If a player were playing as Penelope, and they did not act morally and took on a suitor as Husband, the suitor would kill her husband when she got home, as happened with Agamemnon. Thus moral actions would have moral consequences; and immoral actions would have immoral consequences.

A game such as GTA could be enhanced by allowing the player to shoot the pimp and save the women/prostitutes, telling the women to sin no more.

Such a patent would allow games to achieve higher art, while exalting the female character and form.

Imagine a video game that let one's live, embody, and enact a Hero's Journey Renaissance: “The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail”—Joseph Schumpeter. Classical Ideals in Innovation & The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci.

The following treatment was submitted to The Institute for Humane Studies Hayek Fund on Mar. 18, 2008.

• Dear Elliot,
• Thank you for submitting your application to the Hayek Fund for Scholars. We have received your application and it will go to our Review Committee shortly. You should hear from me again within the next four to six weeks about a decision. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to contact me. Please make sure you check your e-mail frequently, and add our domain (theihs.org) to your email safe list to ensure you receive our emails.
• Sincerely,
• John Thrasher Program Director Institute for Humane Studies

The Road to Freedom Video Game

Educational Ideas Have Consequences (IHC) Video Game & Powering Next-Gen Games With a Classical Libertarian Game Engine

by

Dr. Elliot McGucken

• I have sworn upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.—Thomas Jefferson
• Although libertarian ideas are evident in the writings of the Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu in the sixth century BC, the main thread of libertarianism goes back to the Jewish and Greek idea of a higher law, a law by which everyone, even the ruler, could be judged. The simple idea that the will of the ruler was not the ultimate source of authority helped lay the groundwork for a pluralistic society, the flowering of individualism, and eventually the scientific and economic miracles of Western civilization.—Introduction to The Libertarian Reader
• The play's the thing, in which I'll catch the conscience of the King.—Hamlet
• The tragedy of collectivist thought is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends. It may indeed be said that it is the paradox of all collectivist doctrine and its demands for “conscious” control or “conscious” planning that they necessarily lead to the demand that the mind of some individual should rule supreme—while only the individualist approach to social phenomena makes us recognize the superindividual forces which guide the growth of reason. Individualism is thus an attitude of humility before this social process and of tolerance to other opinions and is the exact opposite of that intellectual hubris which is at the root of the demand for comprehensive direction of social purpose.—F. A. Hayek, The End of Truth, The Road to Serfdom
• The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one! Good odds for any Greek. This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny, and usher in a future brighter than anything we could imagine. Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave 300! To victory!—300
• War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.—John Stuart Mill
• You all will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, that before this battle was over, that even a God king can bleed . . . .—Leonidas, 300

Educational Ideas Have Consequences IHC Video Game & A Classical Libertarian Game Engine

Opportunities exist to create novel educational video games embodying Libertarian ideals. The service of classic ideals will endow video games with far more realistic and meaningful worlds, greater emotional and spiritual immersion, epic storytelling, and more engaging gameplay; thusly creating a more exalted realm of games with classical soul. The goal of this research project is to 1) create a functional Road to Freedom video game, 2) realize the patent-pending “Ideas Have Consequences” game engine and a new breed of deeper, more meaningful games, and 3) develop websites and publish articles and papers pertaining to a new realm of video games which explore societal and economic evolution based on the premises that ideas have consequences, and that classical libertarian philosophies are best suited to supporting freedom—the freedom described in America's Founding Documents including: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Such ideals are certainly worth fighting for in the real world—they were worth pledging ones life, one's fortune, and one's sacred honor; and such ideals would be worth fighting for in game worlds.

The novel “Ideas Have Consequences” (IHC) video game engine will allow the player to fight for the foundational ideas of the classical liberal tradition. Throughout history the most grotesque monsters have not been individuals nor physical monsters, but ideas contained in collectivist, tyrannical, and statist philosophies which oppose the individual's natural rights and freedoms; and which exalt kings and the elite above the common rule of law. While modern video games allow one to fight grotesque monsters rendered with stunning pixel counts, they fail to grant insight into the monster's souls. Thus modern games lack deeper dramatic action, epic stories, and character development; along with heart, spirit, and soul—the games lack exalting philosophy and enduring art. As words are the spirit's vessel, monsters that espouse ideologies—in words as well as deeds—will be far more realistic and will lend deeper meaning to games. For it is not the semblance of the creature that is so terrifying in the greatest horror films and thrillers, but it is the soul. And too, it is not the countenance of thugs and dictators—not their singular physical presence which deprives freedom and massacres multitudes; but it are their monstrous ideas. So it is that the player will be able to become a “hero” in IHC games, and defeat the deniers of freedom by battling their ideas; witnessing graphical game-world depictions of their high-stakes successes and failures. Players may fight for entities including the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, private property rights, intellectual property rights, taxation without representation, the freedom of religion, equal justice for all, the gold standard, and more.

The IHC game engine will foster games wherein the battle to defend classical libertarian ideals will enhance and deepen the gameplay. Players will be afforded the unique opportunity to fight for classical ideals and oppose collectivist and tyrannical philosophies depicted via words, deeds, and institutions such as the Ministry of Peace and Truth manifested in the game worlds and dystopias. The IHC engine will be capable of rendering the spirit of the American Revolution, as well as the themes of Orwellian and Randian literature, in realistic worlds that evolve according to prevailing ideas. Imagine playing a Howard Roark or John-Gait-like character, or a Winston Smith in a 1984 world, where you one could actually liberate the world from Big Brother while battling groupthink, both via word (including dialogue trees as seem in Mass Effect) and deed (typical FPS action). The philosophies of Mises, Rothbard, and Hayek will lie at the foundations of IHC games wherein the player will be perpetually challenged to fight for liberty's ideals. The stakes will be high, and the player will witness graphical representations of the physical ramifications of their successes and failures, as the game world evolves according to the ideas and philosophies that come to rule the world and/or dystopia.

The novel IHC game engine, games, and their development will be featured in articles and papers, at conferences, at the festivals I founded and host, and the class that I teach on Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology:

• http://herosjourneyentrepreneurship.org
• http://herosjourneyrenaissance.org
• http://artsentrepreneurship.com
• http://greatbooksgames.com/

In the summer of 2007, I filed a provisional patent for the “Ideas Have Consequences” (IHC) video game engine, dedicated to bringing classical Libertarian ideals to life. I presented the IHC game engine at IHS's summer 2007 Cinematic & Literary Traditions of Liberty at UCLA during my opening-night lecture entitled “Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship.”

A staple of the festivals I host is a panel on video game development with top game designers and writers including Flint Dille and John Zuur, and they also joined me on a panel at IHS's summer 2007 Cinematic & Literary Traditions of Liberty at UCLA.

By allowing players to serve and fight for classical ideals, the IHC game engine will present more meaningful and pertinent worlds, afford the players deeper emotional and spiritual immersion, and result in more engaging and realistic gameplay; as ideas have consequences. As Aristotle noted, the subplot and the plot must be unified, and the premise of this invention allows the on-screen action to mirror the deeper dramatic action that takes place in the realm of ideas.

At the crux of the IHC patent and the IHC game engine is the heart and soul of the Libertarian philosophy which comes to us from Athens and Jerusalem—from Socrates and Jesus, from Plato, Aristotle, and Moses; and more recently from Jefferson, Jackson, Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and Rand. To date, nobody has incorporated the nobility of the Greats' ideas and their eloquent words in video games, and then pitted those classical ideals against the likes of tyrants, deconstructionists, and collectivists such as Marx, Lenin, Mussolini, and King George.

An embodiment of the game engine may demonstrate that where collectivism reigns and the US Constitution and its supporting texts are banished, banned, or deconstructed, society deteriorates both physically and spiritually. Long lines will form as shops close up, and a police state will evolve as natural freedoms are curtailed and denied. A 1984 dystopia may come to be if the player fails to defeat collectivist ideologies, and the Ten Commandments will be replaced with posters of tyrannical rulers in the courthouses. The stakes of the game will be high, and should the player fail to win the battle for the classical truths in the Western Heritage, they will not only see, but suffer the physical manifestations of decline and decadence. Should the player fail to take correct, timely, and prudent action in the battle for classical ideals, they will witness skyrocketing inflation and populations driven to war. Players will be able to fight via both word and deed, utilizing the first two amendments of the US Constitution.

The player will determine allies and enemies in the game world by words and deeds. Real historical quotes could be used, and the in-game characters could even quote from books, citing the authors. Or the in-game characters could speak words echoing various ideologies, or partake in actions representing ideologies. The player would have to figure out if they are friend or foe, based on their words and deeds, remembering that actions speak louder than words.

For instance, a friendly character could say things such as:

• Allie1: “Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality—an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.”—Hayek
• Allie2: “It is an enormous simplification to speak of the American mind. Every American has his own mind.”—Mises
• Allie3: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”—The Declaration of Independence
• Allie4: “The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;—The United States Constitution
• Allie5: “The simple idea that the will of the ruler was not the ultimate source of authority helped lay the groundwork for a pluralistic society, the flowering of individualism, and eventually the scientific and economic miracles of Western civilization.”—The Libertarian Reader

While an enemy character would say Orwellian things such as “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength,” or:

• Enemy1: “It is true that liberty is precious—so precious that it must be rationed.”—Lenin
• Enemy2: “Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.”—Lenin
• Enemy3: “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.”—Lenin
• Enemy4: “A lie told often enough becomes truth.”—Lenin
• Enemy5: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”—Karl Marx
• Enemy6: “In a higher phase of communist society . . . only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”—Karl Marx
• Enemy7: “Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.”—Karl Marx
• Enemy8: “Religion is the opium of the masses.”—Karl Marx

While typical video games rely on mindless violence directed against monsters represented via physical characteristics; they never let the player battle the greater monsters and enemies of collectivist ideas, statist philosophies, and fiat economists who ultimately are statists. Alan Greenspan wrote, ““In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. . . . This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.””

And so it is that this video game offers more realistic gameplay by actually allowing the player to battle ideas; both in dialogue form and on the battlefield. Enemies are not identified by their mere appearance, but rather by their ideas, which are written, spoken, and manifested via action and in institutions throughout the game.

The bestselling PS2 game of all time is Grand Theft Auto, selling over 25,000,000 copies. In the open-ended game, one is allowed to hire a hooker and then kill her and get one's money back. Not only is that reprehensible, but the game quickly gets boring, as the missions are all performed in a most superficial context of stealing and killing for the sake of stealing and killing. There is no higher purpose—there are no classical ideals being served. It's all just a game of high-pixel-count plundering, where truth and story have been replaced by spectacle, soul with semblance, and deeper philosophies with superficial groupthink. The present invention proposes that the service of classic ideals will endow video games with far more meaningful worlds, emotional and spiritual immersion, and engaging gameplay.

The rising generation is longing for more meaningful and exalted art, and I would be grateful for this grant which would allow me to serve them with such art. Imagine the following embodiment of the present invention:

• 1. A system and method for creating an electronic, interactive video game wherein ideals and ideas have consequences
• 2. The system and method in 1 where the qualities of being a vampire or zombie are passed along via the communication of said ideals and ideas.
• 3. The system and method in 1 where dialogue trees are infused with said ideas and ideals, and wherein the ideas and ideals live or die in the gameworld depending on the dialogue that is chosen.
• 4. The system and method in 1 where action trees are infused with said ideas and ideals, and wherein the ideas and ideals live or die in the gameworld depending on the action that is chosen.
• 5. The system and method in 1 where dialogue and action trees are infused with said ideas and ideals, and wherein the ideas and ideals live or die in the gameworld depending on the dialogue or action that is chosen.
• 6. The system and method in 1 wherein the consequences of ideas such as collectivism are brought to life in the game world, as well as the characters ability to fight the ideas of collectivism
• 7. The system and method in 1 wherein the consequences of ideas such as communism are brought to life in the game world, as well as the character's ability to fight the ideas of communism
• 8. The system and method in 1 wherein the consequences of ideas such as classical liberty and freedom are brought to life in the game world, as well as the character's ability to fight for the ideas of classical liberty and freedom
• 9. The system and method in 1 wherein the consequences of ideas such as those found in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution are brought to life in the game world, as well as the character's ability to fight for the ideas of classical liberty and freedom
• 10. The system and method in 1 wherein ideas such as collectivism are explored over time. Imagine the following embodiment of the present invention:

1. A system and method for providing a dialogue or action tree in a video game where moral choices underly the choices presented

2. The method in 1 where moral choices lead to victory including but not limited to winning loved ones, winning one's home, winning freedom, winning one's country, and amoral or immoral choices lead to defeat, including losing one's freedom, losing one's country, losing one's home.

3. The method in 1 where the dialogue and/or action trees are based upon to the plot points of great books and classics, such as the odyssey, the iliad, hamlet, biblical stories, and more—for instance, what if Moses hadn't smashed the ten commandments?

4. The method in 1 where the dialogue and/or action trees are based upon famous historical events including the American Revolution, where one could study the consequence

5. The method in 1 where when players follow the course of action of the protagonists in epic stories and great books and classics, they are rewarded with the rich and triumphant, even when tragically cathartic, stories of the great books and classics. And when they fail to make the correct decisions regarding dialogue or action, they lose the plot of the epic classics, and are presented with a dumbed down, degraded version as Odysseus loses Penelope and Beatrice loses Dante.

6. The method in 1 where when players follow the course of action of the protagonists in epic stories and great books and classics but performed in contemporary contexts with contemporary language and settings, they are rewarded with the rich and triumphant, even when tragically cathartic, stories of the great books and classics. And when they fail to make the correct decisions regarding dialogue or action, they lose the plot of the epic classics, and are presented with a dumbed down, degraded version as Odysseus loses Penelope and Beatrice loses Dante, just as marriage is dying in our own culture.

Imagine an embodiment of the present invention as follows:

A video game which has characters that have ideas, ideologies and philosophies, where said ideas, ideologies, and philosophies are manifested in the evolution of the game world.

A video game wherein characters speak words reflecting said ideologies and philosophies.

Wherein said ideologies may be rooted in historical ideologies and philosophies.

Where the player character can choose whether or not to interact with characters based on their ideologies.

Where the player character can choose whether or not to shoot characters based on their ideologies.

Where the player character can choose whether or not to shoot in game characters based upon the words they speak.

Where the world evolves depending on the ideologies that are allowed to live.

Where the in-game, open-ended world evolves depending on the ideas and ideologies that are killed.

Where the in-game, open-ended world evolves depending on which characters the character interacts with.

Where the in-game, open-ended world devolves when collectivist ideologies prevail.

Where the in-game, open-ended world is exalted when judeo-christian ideologies prevail.

Where the character is murdered by collectivists when he fails to kill the collectivist characters.

Wherein the video game world brings to live literary works such as Orwell's animal farm.

Wherein the video game brings to life the result of political campaigns.

Wherein the video game brings to live novels such as Atlas Shrugged, 1984, and A Brave New World.

Wherein the video game brings to life Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

Wherein the video game brings to life Autumn Rangers.

Wherein the video game brings to live economic theories and free markets versus socialistic conflicts.

Wherein the video game world will devolve in a physical manner when communism, collectivism, and/or fiatism take hold. The video game world will devolve in a physical manner including, but not limited to, dreary buildings, increased drinking, long lines waiting for materials and food and goods, a police state, martial law, less freedom, walls, banned books, banned thoughts, and banned art.

The video game world will devolve when those who espouse communistic tendencies are allowed to dominate.

The video game may also allow the first person player to win the world over via speaking ideologies and arguing their point, trying to convince the population of the virtues of leading via virtue.

The video game will allow the optimum blend of Jeffersonian Classical Liberalism to prevail in the world. The video game will allow the player to fight for the high morals expressed in The Odyssey, Shakespeare, and the Bible.

Versions of the video game would allow one to fight for the ideals expressed in The Book of Matthew and/or the Apology.

Versions of the video game would allow one to fight for the ideals expressed in The Book of Matthew and/or the Apology, wherein one may actually save Socrates or Jesus.

The video game will allow classical liberal, libertarian, collectivist, and other ideologies to face off in a world where ideas have consequences, and where the world actually evolves according to the prevailing ideals.

Building the Novel Ideas have Consequences Video Games

The purpose of this invention is not to reinvent the wheel nor to describe how to build a standard video game system such as an XBOX or Playstation or Wii or PC. Nor is the purpose to describe how to create an FPS or MMORPG nor TPS, all of which could be enhanced and exalted by the present invention. Rather, building upon the ample prior art, this invention exalts a brand new breed of video games. This invention builds upon prior inventions such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,954, Sanity system for video game, and patent application number 20070087798: Morality system and method for video game: system and method for creating story, deeper meaning and emotions, enhanced characters and ai, and dramatic art in video games. Both these documents describe the fundamentals of building a gaming system and a game, both in words and figures, and there is no need to repeat, nor recount the art here.

This invention will foster video games built upon standard video game consoles and systems such as those represented in FIG. 3 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,954: Sanity system for video game, and the accompanying description of the figure contained in U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,954. This invention will foster video games built upon standard video game consoles and systems such as those represented in FIGS. 4A and 4B of U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,954, and the accompanying description of the figure contained in the patent. Similar figures for gaming systems are also included in patent application #20070087798: Morality system and method for video game: system and method for creating story, deeper meaning and emotions, enhanced characters and ai, and dramatic art in video games. As all the above mentioned figures represent standard depictions of gaming consoles and systems, and are found in the prior art, there is no need to redraw them here. Rather, the purpose of this application is to build upon the prior and current art.

Basic Embodiments of the Present Invention

Someone skilled in the art of video game design development could build and complete a game in the novel realm of games that the present invention will foster. This new class of games could be built on multiple platforms, including the Playstation, Xbox360, Wii, and the PC. The most straightforward way to build an “Ideas Have Consequences” game would be to begin by using a game engine such as Unreal, Torque, C4, Crysis, or some other game engine; and then layer the AI ontop of it. This new realm of gaming could quickly and easily be brought to life by a small team of developers.

The basic precepts of this patent could be rendered in multiple forms and embodiments by common developers skilled in the art of game development. The present invention would lead to a brand new realm of video games and exalted games including games where ideas had consequences in the game world, and where vampire and zombie qualities are communicated by ideas, and not by physical content including biting. A multitude of game engines could be used, including the Torque Game Engine, the Unreal Engine, the C4 engine, XNA, and other engines.

Using the Torque engine, a simple manifestation of the game could be built as follows:

1. $250 for NDA/non-compete/copyright assignment—just to get started! Send me your address! (Please find the documents attached—you could sign & scan & email).

2. $250 for the following—The standard Torque FPS shooter working with the following packages, working, with source code & any changes documented/commented in code: I will buy and provide packages:

http://garagegames.com/products/104/ (environment)

http://garagegames.com/products/271/ (yack pack to help with the speaking)

http://garagegames.com/products/172/ (for help with animation)

http://garagegames.com/products/176/ (weapons pack)

http://garagegames.com/products/75/ (soldier pack) for FPS player

http://garagegames.com/products/277/ (pam pack) for enemies

http://garagegames.com/products/95/ (ava pack) for enemies

http://garagegames.com/products/61/ (adam pack) for enemies

http://www.mydreamrpg.com/orders/browse_products.php (combat starter kit)

3. $250 for adding voices and introducing basic gameplay:

a. enemy characters say things that get louder as you get closer

b. enemy characters try to shoot player character

c. enemy characters multiply over time

4. $250 for final documentation/questions answered/tweaks/final code

Once the above basic game is built by someone with knowledge in the field, various voice files, reflecting various ideologies, could be added. In such a game, “monsters” would be identified by their ideas, manifested in manners including the books they read, the places they convene at, the words they speak, and the things they do. The monster's words, and the ideas behind them, will have consequences in the game. Thus, the ideas and ideals that prevail, in word, deed, and action will influence the eventual outcome of the game.

One version of the game would allow the fiatocracy's masters to pursue and persecute characters for merely writing or speaking words that counter and question the Corporate State, mimicking a feminist literature department and creative writing classes such as those taught by Joyce Carol Oates. The fiatocracy would sanction and approve and fund such games, just as they approve of hiring and killing hookers, while shooting innocent cops and civilians, flaunting the law; and such games could be used to train future MBAs and lawyers to take people's homes and transfer their wealth to the fiatocracy's banks via the inflation tax and countless other forms of corruption. But a nobler version of the game would allow the player to fight for the US Constitution, Shakespeare, and the Bible, as did Lincoln.

In the simplest manifestation of the game, the players try to shoot the enemy characters. The enemy characters are identified by their ideas—manifested in manners including, but not limited to, the words they speak and/or read, the people they congregate with, and the actions they partake in. This alone would mark the game as a novel and maverick form of gaming.

In a slightly more advanced version of the game, the enemy characters could multiply over time, by spreading their ideas with spoken and/or written words. The enemy characters are identified by the words they speak. This alone would mark the game as a novel and maverick form of gaming. The player character would have to shoot the enemy characters before their ideas became too dominant. This manifestation of the present invention would have aspects of a typical vampire or zombie game, but it would differ in that the qualities of being infected are not spread by a virus, nor physical encounter, but by taking in ideas—including ideas that might have dire consequences. For instance, if the player is unable to stop, via word or deed, too many people from buying in to collectivism, the world as a whole will suffer dire consequences.

In a slightly more advanced version of the game, the enemy characters could multiply over time, by spreading their ideas with spoken and/or written words. The enemy characters could hold meetings and form militias, which would grow more powerful over time. The enemy characters are identified by the words they speak. This alone would mark the game as a novel and maverick form of gaming. The player character would have to shoot the enemy characters before their ideas became too dominant, and resulted in the decline of the civilization.

In a slightly more advanced version of the game, the enemy characters could multiply over time, by spreading their ideas with spoken and/or written words. The enemy characters are identified by the words they speak. Instead of shooting the enemy character, the player could try to reason with them through a dialogue tree or other means. At some point, voice recognition software could be incorporated. This alone would mark the game as a novel and maverick form of gaming. The player character would have to reason with the enemy characters, through a dialogue tree or other methods, including spoken words, before the enemy's ideas became too dominant amongst the npc or real characters in the game world. If reason failed, they may be called upon to shoot the enemy npcs or real characters before their ideas became to dominant. If they shot the enemy characters too soon, they may not be able to find compatriots, nor sympathetic followers, who will have perceived their shooting or preemptive actions as uncalled for and unjust. But if they waited too long to speak or take action, the world would be lost, and tyranny and corruption would prevail.

In a slightly more advanced version of the game, the enemy characters could multiply over time, by spreading their ideas with spoken and/or written words, similar to how vampires and zombies spread their viruses and nature via physical contact. The antidote to having been infected by bad ideas would be good ideas, which the player character would have to speak. So it is that this invention could also lead to an exalted, new form of the classical vampire and/or zombie game, where the word, soul, and spirit played a greater role.

In a slightly more advanced version of the game, the enemy characters could multiply over time, by spreading their ideas with spoken and/or written words, similar to how vampires and zombies spread their viruses and nature via physical contact. The antidote to having been infected by bad ideas would be good ideas, which the player character would have to speak. So it is that this invention could also lead to an exalted, new form of the classical vampire and/or zombie game, where the word, soul, and spirit played a greater role. Furthermore, cultural evolution based on ideas could be simulated, as well as revolutions and struggles for liberty and freedom against tyranny and oppression. Furthermore, cultural evolution based on ideas could be simulated, as well as revolutions and struggles for liberty and freedom, based on the classical Judeo-Christian heritage, against the fiatocracy's tyranny and oppression, based on paganism, feminism, communism, and GTA/GOW fanboyism.

The enemy characters are identified by their ideas and ideals, manifested in the words they speak. Instead of shooting the enemy character, the player could try to reason with them through a dialogue tree or other means. At some point, voice recognition software could be incorporated. This alone would mark the game as a novel and maverick form of gaming. The player character would have to reason with the enemy characters before their ideas became too dominant. If reason failed, they may be called upon to shoot the enemy characters before their ideas became to dominant. If they shot the enemy characters too soon, they may not be able to find compatriots, nor sympathetic followers, who will have perceived their shooting or preemptive actions as uncalled for and unjust. But if they waited too long to speak or take action, the world would be lost, and tyranny and corruption would prevail.

The above video game scenarios and embodiments of the present invention are not meant to limit nor constrain the present invention. Millions of other combinations and manifestations of video games wherein ideas have consequences and/or where actions speak louder than words, and/or where matching word and deed leads towards victory, and/or wherein virtuous word and deed lead towards victory could be imagined, rendered, and built by someone knowledgeable in the realm of video game design and implementation. And as the tools are getting easier and easier to use with each passing day, it will become easier and easier to build the games implied by this invention.

The realm of video gaming is a crowded art, and thus seemingly small ideas, such as those described in the current invention, could have vast and resounding consequences.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS/FIGURES

FIG. 1 describes a basic scenario where the player has the option of speaking truth to power. Of course he may be killed or shot by some force such as the feminist fanboy fiatocracy, but only by speaking truth to power shall their soul remain intact and become exalted. Only by speaking truth to power will they reach the apotheosis, and only by doing the right, moral thing, shall they become exalted, and shall they be able to wield the Gold 45 Revolver—for it only glows gold for those doing the right thing.

FIG. 2 illustrates one of the most basic gameflows and novel gaming aspects of the present invention, which allows one to fight for ideas. In this most simple case, the player encounters a woman quoting Lenin. If the player quotes Marx to her, or Engels, the world is lost—it falls to communism, collectivism, and Satanism. If the player exalts her by quoting Hayek, or Adam Smith, or Mises, or Moses or Jesus, then the world is saved and exalted. A more complex interaction may consist of the above scenario with dialogue trees, which are used as the attempt to logically exalt the woman who was found quoting Lenin, and by reasoning with her, to recruit her to fighting for a better world. In various manifestations of this dynamic, by failing to reason with enough npc's, it might so happen that the rebel force that the player is trying to build never reaches critical mass. In no way does the simplicity of the action and dialogue in FIG. 2 prevent the present invention from exalting and embodying far more complex actions and dialogues. While Marx, Lenin, Hayek, and Mises are used in this example, any ideology; and its opposition, could be used. Though the more exalted the ideology, the more fun the game will be.

FIG. 3 illustrates a slightly more complex course of action and dialogue that the present invention could afford in a game. Unable to reason with the woman quoting Lenin, the player ultimately must shoot her to save the world. Of course all the feminized fanboys will detest this, as they lean leftwards and thus prefer jacking cars, hiring and killing prostitutes, and killing the innocent unborn over fighting for liberty's ideals; but it's high time for the feminist fanboys to man up, which is what this invention does, taking advantage of the vast and exalted realms of gameplay and novel forms of gaming that counter the prevailing expert opinion, while providing a solution to a long-felt need—video games with soul.

FIG. 4 illustrates the brand new form of vampire and zombie games the present invention would afford. In the prior art, the condition of being a vampire or zombie was typically communicated by physical interaction, such as physical biting of the victim. Also, now and then, viruses have transformed people. In the present invention, ideas would transform people. The ideas could be communicated both by the spoken and written word, including conversations, speeches, pamphlets, and other means and methods. Those who receive the ideas would become “vampires” and “zombies” of the cause.

FIG. 5 illustrates how the present invention may be used to bring the great books and classics alive in a dialogue tree. The present invention may father future inventions which treat this fundamental, basic concept in far more detail.

FIG. 6 illustrates how the present invention may be used to bring Scripture to life. The present invention may father future inventions which treat this fundamental, basic concept in far more detail. The wisdom of all classical prophets and poets may be brought to life in a similar manner, as ideas have consequences.

FIG. 7 illustrates how the present invention may be used to bring Scripture to life. The present invention may father future inventions which treat this fundamental, basic concept in far more detail. The wisdom of all classical prophets and poets may be brought to life in a similar manner, as ideas have consequences. Jesus preaches turning the other cheek, and Odysseus often must forgo honor and glory, and take abuse.

FIG. 8 pertains to matching word and deed—to both speaking out for and fighting for exalted classical ideals such as those found in Hayek/Adam Smith/Homer/Scripture and the Constitution.

FIG. 9 illustrates how the present invention fosters gameplay and gameworlds that are influenced depending on how the player interacts with various none-player characters (npcs), based on the npcs' ideas and ideals that are manifested in writing and talking.

FIG. 10 illustrates how the present invention calls upon the player to judge another player's character. By associating with liars, the game is lost. By associating with characters of exalted and upstanding character, the game is won.

FIG. 11 illustrates a slightly more complex course of action and dialogue that the present invention could afford in a game. Unable to reason with the npc who starts speaking evilly and even begins acting evilly, the player ultimately must shoot the npc to save the world. Of course all the feminized fanboys will detest this, as they detest Jefferson's and Madison's notion of “The Rule of Law,” and lean leftwards and thus prefer jacking cars, hiring and killing prostitutes, and killing the innocent unborn over fighting for liberty's ideals; but it's high time for the feminist fanboys to man up, which is what this invention does, taking advantage of the vast and exalted realms of gameplay and novel forms of gaming that counter the prevailing expert opinion, while providing a solution to a long-felt need—video games, and culture, with soul.

FIG. 12 illustrates how the present invention would allow a character to recruit fellow members of their fellowship. If the character fails to recruit those with exalted character, they will ultimately fail.

FIG. 13 illustrates how the present invention has the novel exalted hooker herald, who plays the role of the goddess with the secret—the Threshold Guardian—such as princess Leah and Trinity. While games view hookers as lowlifes, worthy of use, abuse, and murder, this novel invention would foster games where the hookers have souls, and within those souls are the secrets to the games greater glory and ultimate victory over the fiatocracy and the Supreme Court which has sanctified the murder of tens of millions innocent souls, and plays GTA all day long, dancing on the graves of all the aborted and the US Constitution, while wearing their black robes. This is too difficult to draw, but the present figure shall suffice for the basic concept. It should be noted that many experts will oppose this invention because they prefer abortion, prostitution, and killing hookers, over faith and the family, as detailed in Rogue Economics by Loretta Napoleoni.

FIG. 14 illustrates how the present invention would encourage players to not only speak words of wisdom, but to take words of wisdom that they hear to heart, and live by them, rendering words deeds.

FIG. 15 illustrates the novel form of weaponry the present game would afford, where the weapons are only activated by those who act upon ideas and higher ideals. Ideas have consequences, and thus those who fight for the right ideas, reap the exalted consequences. The Gold 45 revolver—a normal revolver that glows gold when the character does the right thing is used in this example, but the weapon could be any form of weapon or tool, or anything else for that matter. As the Gold 45 Revolver is part of a contemporary mythology exalting the Great Books and Classics, it shall be opposed and deconstructed in the fiatocracy's faculty and committee meetings across the land, but that's the great thing about Truth. Even weapons of mass destruction, such as committee's headed by the University President's chief of staff, who never reads books nor steps in a classroom, cannot destroy the Truth, the Soul, and Classic, Epic Mythology. And so it is that the world, and the renaissance, are eventually won by those who adhere to Truth, and fight for the poetic prophesies of the classical prophets and poets via both word and deed. Their moral points augment, via word and deed in the game's context and reach the threshold, whereupon the revolver starts glowing gold, allowing he who has suffered so much to take revenge upon all those who persecuted the innocent, and kicked him down, believing he was a beggar, placing a crown of thorns on his head, and crucifying him.

FIG. 16 illustrates how the present invention could exalt the hero's journey in a superior manner in virtual worlds, and bring it to life in video games. The various stages of the classical hero's journey which Joseph Campbell made famous are listed in (1601).

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS/FIGURES

The following figures pertain to the flow of action and dialogue—word and deed—in the realm of video games and gaming.

FIG. 1 describes a basic scenario where the player (100) has the option of speaking truth to power. Of course he may be killed or shot by some force such as the feminist fanboy fiatocracy, but only by speaking truth to power (102) shall their soul remain intact and become exalted (104). Only by speaking truth to power will they reach the apotheosis (108), and only by doing the right, moral thing, shall they become exalted, and shall they be able to wield the Gold 45 Revolver (106)—for it only glows gold for those doing the right thing. If the player fails to speak truth to power (103), they will suffer spiritual defeat (105), and the gold 45 (107) will never work, and ultimately the showdown (109) will be lost. Some other weapon may be substituted for the 45 Revolver, including a wand or bow and arrow, but the uniqueness of this invention is manifested in the fact that heretofore, no other game has linked the functionality of weapons to the words and ideas that are spoken. Ideas and words have consequences in this novel game.

FIG. 2 illustrates one of the most basic gameflows and novel gaming aspects of the present invention, which allows one to fight for ideas, both in word and deed. In this most simple case, the player (201) encounters a woman quoting Lenin (202). If the player quotes Marx (204) to her, or Engels, the world is lost (207)—it falls to communism, collectivism, and Satanism. If the player exalts her by quoting Hayek (205), or Adam Smith, or Mises, or Moses or Jesus (208), then the world is saved and exalted. A more complex interaction may consist of the above scenario with dialogue trees, which are used as the attempt to logically exalt the woman who was found quoting Lenin, and by reasoning with her, to recruit her to fighting for a better world. In various manifestations of this dynamic, by failing to reason with enough npc's, it might so happen that the rebel force that the player is trying to build never reaches critical mass. In no way does the simplicity of the action and dialogue in FIG. 2 prevent the present invention from exalting and embodying far more complex actions and dialogues. While Marx, Lenin, Hayek, and Mises are used in this example, any ideology; and its opposition, could be used. Though the more exalted the ideology, the more fun the game will be. The novel aspects of this invention is that it could lead to games that are won and lost purely in the realm of ideas. As voice recognition and AI got better and better, one could imagine games where one could win and lose the world, such as America, by trying to deliver exalting and eloquent speeches, such as Abraham Lincoln, or penning exalting documents, as did Jefferson and our Founding Fathers. In another scenario, the player (211) encounters an npc expressing opposition to Constitutional ideals (212) in word and/or deed, whereupon the player has a choice (213). The player can quote Marx/Fiat wisdom/collectivist wisdom (214), or they can quote the Founding Fathers (215). The selection may be made by a dialogue tree or some sort of menu, or by actual voice and voice recognition software. Should the player (211) choose to quote Marx/fiat/communistic wisdom, the world will see rapid inflation, deflation, theft via the inflation tax, massive debt, empire, long lines, wealth transfer to the rich, depressions, corruption, and war. Should the player (211) choose to quote the Founding Fathers, the world will see Virtual world is exalted with liberty, wealth creation, capitalism, freedom, private property, peace, and prosperity. This figure represents a scenario where the non-player character (npc) is easily convinced or swayed by the player's words. However, later figures depict scenarios wherein the npc cannot be so easily convinced, and where they begin to act upon their bad ideas, if reasoning with them fails. At this point, when they are taking private property and laying the road to tyranny, more exalted action is needed. Any and all Constitutional ideas and ideals may be incorporated, as well as the societal consequences for falling short of serving them. Such ideas would include private property, the right the artist, author, and inventor to own their creations, the right to life, liberty, and happiness, the right to bear arms, and the freedom of speech. The fundamental action depicted in the figure and these words, and elaborated and expounded on throughout this novel invention, could be built upon to bring novels and great works of literature and film to life in virtual worlds and video games, such as 1984, A Brave New World, Animal Farm, 300, Braveheart, and The Odyssey, as well as historical events, such as the American Founding and the Battle of Thermopylae. So it is that movie and game studios, with the talent, artistry, and acumen to see the vast, unifying value of classical ideals, could more efficiently marry film, literature, and games; resulting in enhanced commercial and educational opportunities.

FIG. 3 illustrates a slightly more complex course of action and dialogue that the present invention could afford in a video game. Marx/Lenin vs. F. A. Hayek/Founding Fathers are used in this example, but any opposing ideologies could suffice, as this novel invention is designed to show and manifest the consequences of all ideas and ideals in the game world, thusly giving the player something greater to fight for, than mere points, or mere number of monsters killed, or mere number of hookers killed, or mere completion of the exact same FPS game that really hasn't changed since DOOM, but only obtained prettier graphics. Again the player (300) encounters a woman quoting Lenin (301). The player than chooses how to respond (304). If the player (300) quotes Marx (303), the world falls to serfdom and tyranny (302). This may be preceded by a critical mass of npcs arisning, all quoting Marx and Lenin, taking the world down. However, if the player (300) quotes The Founding Fathers (305), the woman quotes more Lenin (306). The player than has another option of what to do. If the player quotes Marx (308), again the world may fall to Serfdom. If the player quotes Hayek (310), then the woman, thinking that all he ever does is talk, and say stupid things, seizes his property for redistribution (311). The player than has another choice of what to do. If the player does nothing, the world will fall to Serfdom and tyranny. If the player quotes Marx (313), the world will fall to Serfdom (314) and tyranny. If the player quotes The Founding Fathers (316), the world will fall to serfdom (318) and tyranny. At this point, the only way to save the world from tyranny is to shoot the woman (317) for stealing property, at which point the world is saved (319). There are many other possible scenarios which could be built upon the basic “ideas have consequences” novelty of this figure and invention. For instance, the woman (301) could agree with the player (300), and all would end in peace and freedom. As voice recognition and speech recognition software grew more advanced, the “ideas have consequences” game could become more and more enjoyable. Unable to reason with the woman quoting Lenin, the player ultimately must shoot her to save the world, as she draws first blood by putting her ideas into action. Of course all the feminized fanboys will detest this, as they lean leftwards and thus prefer jacking cars, hiring and killing prostitutes, and killing the innocent unborn over fighting for liberty's ideals; but it's high time for the feminist fanboys to man up, which is what this invention does, taking advantage of the vast and exalted realms of gameplay and novel forms of gaming that counter the prevailing expert opinion, while providing a solution to a long-felt need—video games with soul.

FIG. 4 illustrates the brand new form of vampire and zombie games the present invention would afford. In the prior art, the condition of being a vampire or zombie was typically communicated by physical interaction, such as physical biting of the victim. Also, now and then, physical viruses have transformed people. In the present invention, ideas would transform people into vampires and zombies. The ideas could be communicated both by the spoken and written word, including conversations, speeches, pamphlets, and other means and methods. Those who receive the ideas would become “vampires” and “zombies” of the cause. The player could save the vampires or zombies, or inoculate them and prevent infection, by ideas. For instance, in the gameworld, npc1 (401) encounters the npc2 (402) vampire who quotes Lenin. Npc1 then becomes a vampire/communist (404). Npc1 then encounters npc3 and quotes Lenin (406). Npc3 then also becomes a vampire/communist. Of course other philosophers and ideologies could be substituted for Lenin, Marx, and Communism, but one gets the idea. Also, Npc2 encounters woman2 and quotes Marx to her (405). Woman2 becomes a vampire/communist (407). Woman2 then encounters man3 (409) and quotes Lenin to him. Man3 then becomes a vampire/communist (410). Then, Man3 encounters a player who quotes Hayek (411), and man3 is saved—he no longer is a vampire/zombie/communist (412). Such novel scenarios could be easily realized by a game designer, and the concepts in this figure could be combined with concepts in the previous figure, where when words aren't enough to save or change vampires and zombies, silver bullets and golden revolvers may be needed. If the player fails to serve and speak out and/or fight for ideas and ideals, the number of vampires and/or zombies may reach a critical mass, and the consequences will be dire, as dark consequences befall the video game's virtual world.

FIG. 5 illustrates how the present invention may be used to bring the great books and classics alive in a dialogue and action tree, wherein ideas have consequences. The present invention may father future inventions which treat this fundamental, basic concept in far more detail. The player (500) would reach a plot point in Homer's Odyssey (501). The player would then have to make a choice of what to say/do. By choosing Odysseus's words and/or his actions (504), such as telling his men to tie him to the mast, the player is rewarded with the exalted plot of the Odyssey as they are taken closer to winning their home and Penelope, and they get to encounter the next plot point (504). But, if the player (500) chooses actions and words other than Odysseus's (503), and tells his men not to tie him to the mast, and the player (500) instead seeks out the sirens, or lotus eaters, then he shall fail and be taken off course. By mapping the dialogue and action trees of a video game straight onto a classic, the present “ideas have consequences” invention could be realized, as ultimately, all Great Books and Classics are driven by Characters who harbor ideals, and their ultimate victory or defeat is a consequence of ideals. This is why the prior art such as GTA and GOW and Fallout3 is boring.

FIG. 6 illustrates how the present invention may be used to bring Scripture to life. The player (600) could walk through the world as a poet or prophet such as Jesus (601). A plot point could arise (601), such as the people are about to stone a hooker. The player would then have to choose what to say or do. For instance, he could say, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” and then tell the hooker to “go and sin no more.” So it is that he would bring peace and freedom to the world. If Jesus spoke other words, the hooker may be stoned to death, resulting in suffering. Such basic concepts may be extrapolated and built upon to cover wars and civilizations, which would rise and fall based on ideas that have consequences. Abuses of Christianity and Hippocracy could be explored, involving scenarios where the player's character said one thing and did another, or dealt with characters saying one thing and doing another, which is covered in later figures. The present invention may father future inventions which treat this fundamental, basic concept in far more detail. The wisdom of all classical prophets and poets may be brought to life in a similar manner, as ideas have consequences. The player can battle for ideas that are based upon classical moral and economic principles of famous philosophers, prophets, poets, statesmen, and economists including Plato, Moses, Jesus, Gandhi Sun Tzu, Buda, Jefferson, Aristotle, F. A. Hayek, Martin Luther King Jr., Homer, Ludwig Von Mises, Adam Smith, and others, and witness the consequences of both their success and failure of their battle, as the consequences are rendered in the game's physical world.

FIG. 7 illustrates how the present invention may be used to bring Scripture and Great Books to life. The present invention may father future inventions which treat this fundamental, basic concept in far more detail. The wisdom of all classical prophets and poets may be brought to life in a similar manner, as ideas have consequences. Jesus preaches turning the other cheek, and Odysseus often must forgo honor and glory, and take abuse. The player (799) reaches a plot point in the game (700) where the enemy smites or hits the player. The player then has a choice of what to do (701). The player could turn the other cheek (702), and peace and freedom are brought to the world (705). Or, the player could fight back (703), and war would be brought to the world (704). Again classical ideas and ideals have consequences, when rendered in action. Here the idea is the moral calling to turn the other cheek, but the idea could be anything based on a classical ideal, or any moral premise. Another manifestation of the current invention could see the player playing as Odysseus (706). Odysseus could encounter a plot point in the game (707), wherein they are taunted. The player could then choose what to do (708). If they endure the taunts and hits (710), as Odysseus does for awhile (712), the plot is advanced towards ultimate victory, whence Odysseus wins the showdown in the end, string the bow and slaying all the suitors with his compatriot's help. If they fight back too soon (709), then the player (Odysseus in this case) would be killed before they could build their fellowship (711). Again, this basic concept could be combined with other concepts mentioned in this invention, including building fellowships and recruiting compatriots by writing, speaking, and dissembling ideas and ideals.

FIG. 8 pertains to matching word and deed—to both speaking out for and fighting for exalted classical ideals such as those found in Hayek/Adam Smith/Homer/Scripture and the Constitution. Such games implied by this figure would require that ideals and ideas must be defended in both word and deed, over and over again, for peace, wealth, and freedom to prevail. This figure embodies the maxim “Liberty requires eternal vigilance,” as well as the classical ideal of matching word and deed. The player (800) encounters a plot point n the game (801), whereupon they get a choice of what to say (803). If they quote Lenin/Marx/Atheists/Case Studies (802), the world devolves towards tyranny, as millions die in a collectivist system (805), and individuals and creators are persecuted. If they quote Hayek/Adam Smith/Homer/Scripture and the Constitution (804), it brings peace, wealth, and freedom to the world. Individuals and creators are allowed to prosper (806), enjoying property rights—a classical ideal shared by Hayek, von Mises, the Bible, and the Constitution. But alas, the struggle is not over as the player soon encounters another plot point in the game (890), this time requiring action (890), where they must choose what to fight for (810). Again, if they fight for power/communists/the Matrix/Sauron/Scottish Nobles, millions will die in a collectivist system. Some might consider a fiatocracy to be a collectivist corporate system, as while it preaches a free market, the currency, which can buy everything that is sold, is owned and operated by a private corporation, who have quite a few friends in government and on Wall Street. The player could choose to fight for IDEALS and join the rebels/freedom fighters and the Truth (811). In this scenario, peace and freedom would be brought to the world (813). But again, the story is not over; for soon, the player will face another plot point requiring another choice of whether or not to serve classical ideals in word (880) and/or deed. So it is that it is a long, hard road to freedom as it was for America, and it is a long, hard road towards Ithaca, as it was for Odysseus, and even when you arrive on home, or become the wealthiest nation on earth, there are yet battles to be fought.

FIG. 9 illustrates how the present invention fosters gameplay and gameworlds that are influenced depending on how the player interacts with various none-player characters (npcs), based on the npcs' ideas and ideals that are manifested in writing and talking. The figure pertains to how fellowships may be formed based on common ideas and ideals, just as fellowships of revolutionaries were united in the American Revolution, united by the ideas of Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Publius, and other philosopher-statesmen. Imagine a game where one would have to seek players out who spoke an idea, and pass judgment on the idea. If the idea is good, they should befriend the player. If the idea is bad, they should walk away from the player. Imagine how fun that could be, walking a Colonial town, seeking out those who were speaking the ideals of the American Revolution, found in the exalted writings of our Founding Fathers! If they find enough compatriots, the world is saved. If they fail, the world is lost! Also, if a player encounters an npc speaking bad ideas, he must walk away. Otherwise the bad ideas may invade his group. The concepts in this figure could be combined with concepts in other figures of this invention, including the figure where the qualities of being a vampire or zombie are communicated by ideas. If an npc with bad ideas is let in the group or fellowship of good npcs, all the good npcs could become contaminated by the bad npc's ideas, as ideas have consequences. Also a single good player could make a huge difference, by starting slowly, and winning converts to liberty's eternal ideals via penning pamphlets and delivering speeches and speaking words in the game, via dialogue trees, physical speech, and other means. The player (901) encounters an npc speaking good ideas (902). The player then gets a choice (903). The player could befriend the npc (905), whereupon the world is eventually saved (907) by the fellowship that is formed, or the player can walk away from the npc (904), whereby the world is eventually brought down (906) by the association with the npc and their bad ideas. Alternatively, the player (920) encounters an npc speaking bad ideas (908), often opposing classical ideals. The player then has to make a choice (910), where they either engage the npc (913) or walk away from them (912). If they engage the npc, perhaps by dialogue or handing them a pamphlet or listening to them or receiving a pamphlet or some other means, and befriend them, then the world will eventually fall due to the npc's bad ideas and influence. The npc may infiltrate their fellowship or poison their other friends and turn them into vampires. Classical ideals/freedom/liberty will come closer to being lost/defeated (911). Of course this is a simple scenario, and it could be rendered on multiple levels and multiple ways, including taking small steps towards victory or defeat with each encounter of each npc. On the other hand, if the player walks away from the npc (912), then the npc's ideas do not contribute to the fall of the world, nor the defeat of the player, nor the erosion of classical ideals. And classical ideals/freedom/liberty are closer to prevailing (909). This novel form of gaming could be enhanced with spies and characters who say one thing and do another, who are addressed in the next figure.

FIG. 10 illustrates how the present invention will foster games that call upon the player to judge another player's character. Games such as Gears of War never call upon the player to judge a monster by their character, soul, and ideals; but only by their superficial semblance. Character is well defined by the Great Books and Classics—indeed they are defined by character, and thus the great books are ideals mentors and guides and platforms for the embodiment of this invention. Those who match word and deed shall deemed worthy of associating with. Those who fail to match word and deed shall be avoided. By associating with liars and low, malicious characters, the game is lost. By associating with characters of exalted and upstanding character, the game is won. Of course, this could be subtle, as those who say they are going oft do not go, and those who say that they are not going sometimes do. Actions speak louder than words. The player (1001) may encounter an npc who says one thing and does another (1099). The player (1001) then must make a choice. If they walk away from the NPC (1005), the world comes closer to being saved, as classical ideals and ideas have exalted consequences. If they befriend the npc of low character, classical ideals and their consequences are ultimately opposed. Suppose the player in the video game (1010) encounters characters who match word and deed (1011). The player then has a choice. Suppose the player befriends the npc with good character. Then classical ideals and their consequences are advanced (1015). The player can also choose to walk away from the npc (1016), whence classical ideals and their consequences are then opposed (1013). The classical ideals may be advanced in multiple manners, including by the forming of a fellowship of compatriots who all agree that classical ideals ought be advanced in word and deed—in dialogue, speeches, pamphlets, and in action; such as who is fought against and physically opposed, as described in earlier figures.

FIG. 11 illustrates a slightly more complex course of action and dialogue that the present invention could afford in a game. Unable to reason with the npc who starts speaking evilly and even begins acting evilly, the player ultimately must shoot the npc to save the consequences of classical ideals including freedom, liberty, and justice. Of course all the feminized fanboys will detest this, as they detest Jefferson's and Madison's notion of “The Rule of Law,” and lean leftwards and thus prefer jacking cars, hiring and killing prostitutes, and killing the innocent unborn over fighting for liberty's ideals; but it's high time for the feminist fanboys to man up, which is what this invention does, taking advantage of the vast and exalted realms of gameplay and novel forms of gaming that counter the prevailing expert opinion, while providing a solution to a long-felt need—video games, and culture, with soul. The player of the video game (1101) encounters an npc with bad ideas (1102) that could be manifested in various forms, including spoken or written. Or the ideas could even be manifested by an action the player (1101) witnesses the npc (1102) partakes in. The player then has a choice. The player (1101) may agree with the NPC (1107), in which case classical ideals and their consequences are opposed, as the npc is never reformed, and they go forth, spreading their ideas. The bad ideas may create more vampires/zombies, as described in earlier figures. Alternatively, the player (1104) may ignore the npc (1107), in which case the npc continues speaking bad ideas (1105). The bad ideas may create more vampires/zombies, as described in earlier figures. The player could disagree (1199) with the npc who may be reformed, or they may speak more bad ideas (1112), or the npc may even act on their bad ideas and shoot the player (1113). The player will then have another choice (1114). Whether they agree (1115) or disagree (1119) with the npc, whether they try to reason with them or not, the npc will shoot the player (1116) or (1120). The only solution at this point is to shoot the npc (1117), who is becoming violent, or who is spreading too many bad ideas, resulting in a growing fellowship of vampires/zombies, which will ultimately defeat the world, as shown in earlier figures. When the npc is shot (1117), classical ideals are exalted. Going back to step (1105), where the npc speaks more bad ideas, this leaves the player (1101) with a choice (1108). They can agree with the npc who speaks bad ideas (1109) in which case classical ideals and their exalted consequences such as liberty and freedom are opposed. Or, the player (1101) could ignore the npc (1155), whereupon the npc speaks more bad ideas (1112). Or, the player could disagree with the npc (1166), in which case the npc might act on their bad ideas and shoot the player (1113). At this point the player may be dead. But if they are alive, the will have a choice (1114). Whether they agree (1115) or disagree (1119) with the npc, whether they try to reason with them or not, the npc will shoot the player (1116) or (1120). The only solution at this point is to shoot the npc (1117), who is becoming violent, or who is spreading too many bad ideas, resulting in a growing fellowship of vampires/zombies, which will ultimately defeat the world, as shown in earlier figures. When the npc is shot (1117), classical ideals are exalted. The above descriptions are but the simplest form of the “ideas have consequences” video game engine. The simple addition of classical ideals and the moral premise in the realm of games and video-games could have far-ranging consequences.

FIG. 12 illustrates how the present invention would allow a character to recruit fellow members to their fellowship. If the character fails to recruit those with exalted character, they will ultimately fail. Imagine a game set during the American Revolution where one would have to build an army so as to oppose the British. One would want the men of highest character—those who matched word and deed. Imagine a game set in any era or setting, where one had to fight for freedom or overthrow a tyrant—one would want men with deep honor in their souls—honor which is manifested in actions. So it is that ideas and ideals would have consequences, as only those players with classic/epic ideals in their souls would prevail. The actions and consequences are readily apparent in the flowcharts. The player (1201) encounters a character who says one thing and does another (1202), implying bad character. The player then has a choice (1204). If they recruit the npc (1206) then classical ideals are opposed (1205), as the npc's bad ideas infect the player and/or their fellowship/quest/hero's journey. If they walk away from the npc (1207), then classical ideals are advanced (1203). When the player (1210) encounters an npc who matches word and deed (1211), the player has a choice (1212). If they walk away from the npc (1215), then classical ideals are opposed (1214). If they recruit the npc for their fellowship (1216), then classical ideals are advanced (1213), as those who surround themselves with men of honor and character are more likely to succeed and reap the exalted consequences of exalted ideals.

FIG. 13 illustrates how the present invention emphasizes that central tenet of the Classical Judeo Christian Heritage—all men and women—every soul—should be treated with dignity. Most games are written for fanboys who never understand this classical precept, as raised by single moms, they do not believe that Odysseus is ever coming home. This game shall bring the spirit of classical, epic literature to life, and reward all those who play by the higher ideals, when Odysseus does come home, as he surely will, when this invention exalts a renaissance in gaming. The player (1301) encounters a hooker (1302) and the player then has a choice. If the player (1301) talks to her and listens to her (1304), the world is saved (1307), as the hooker hold a key piece of information—an idea that must be manifested so as to exalt the consequences of the gameworld. The hooker may tell the player of his duty to exalt the gold standard, or the right to life, liberty, and happiness, or some other Constitutional or moral ideal. If the player ignores her words, or merely hires the prostitute and kills her (1303), the world is lost (1305). So it is that this invention introduces the novel exalted hooker herald, who plays the role of the goddess with the secret—the Threshold Guardian—such as princess Leah and Trinity. While games view hookers as lowlifes, worthy of use, abuse, and murder, this novel invention would foster games where the hookers have souls, and within those souls are the secrets to the games greater glory and ultimate victory over the fiatocracy and the Supreme Court which has sanctified the murder of tens of millions innocent souls, and plays GTA all day long, dancing on the graves of all the aborted and the US Constitution, while wearing their black robes. This is too difficult to draw, but the present figure shall suffice for the basic concept. It should be noted that many experts will oppose this invention because they prefer abortion, prostitution, and killing hookers, over faith and the family, as detailed in Rogue Economics by Loretta Napoleoni.

FIG. 14 illustrates how the present invention would encourage players to not only speak words of wisdom, but to take words of wisdom that they hear to heart, and live by them, rendering words deeds. The player (1402) encounters classical ideals in written words or an npc who speaks words of wisdom from a prophet or poet (1401). The player then has a choice (1407). If the player takes the words and classical ideals to heart (1403) and renders them in word and/or deed, the plot advances closer to winning the world (1404) and rendering classical ideals as exalted consequences. If the player ignores the world (1405), the world comes closer to being lost (1406). Many expert fanboys will detest these diagrams, and that is why their expert opinions lead to movie flop after movie flop after movie flop when it comes to movies based on games, and game flop after game flop after game flop of games based on movies. If the player (1408) encounters a classical ideal in written words or an npc who speaks words of wisdom from a prophet or poet (1409) they will have a choice (1490). What does the player do? (1490). If the player continues to jack cars and kill prostates and innocent civilians and cops, the gameworld advances towards a decadent, debauched world. If the player seeks higher purpose and honors the Ten Commandments (1410) or other classical ideals, the game advances towards an exalted world where ideals are rendered in exalted consequences (1413). So it is that the present invention far surpasses the world's supposedly greatest open-ended game—Grand Theft Auto. For GTA is not an open ended world, as there is no chance to exalt the greater world and save it from decadence and decline—there is no opportunity to talk to hookers and reform them, and perhaps to even be exalted by the secrets of their souls. The simple concept of ideas having consequences in a video game world has far-reaching implications for the industry, as novel games could be exalted to new heights, especially when this present patent is combined with Dr. Elliot McGucken's earlier inventions.

FIG. 15 illustrates the novel form of weaponry the present game would afford, where the weapons are only activated by those who act upon ideas and higher ideals. Ideas have consequences, and thus those who fight for the right ideas, reap the exalted consequences. The Gold 45 revolver—a normal revolver that glows gold when the character does the right thing is used in this example, but the weapon could be any form of weapon or tool, or anything else for that matter. As the Gold 45 Revolver is part of a contemporary mythology exalting the Great Books and Classics, it shall be opposed and deconstructed in the fiatocracy's faculty and committee meetings across the land, but that's the great thing about Truth. Even weapons of mass destruction, such as committee's headed by the University President's chief of staff, who never reads books nor steps in a classroom, cannot destroy the Truth, the Soul, and Classic, Epic Mythology. And so it is that the world, and the renaissance, are eventually won by those who adhere to Truth, and fight for the poetic prophesies of the classical prophets and poets via both word and deed. Their moral points augment, via word and deed in the game's context and reach the threshold, whereupon the revolver starts glowing gold, allowing he who has suffered so much to take revenge upon all those who persecuted the innocent, and kicked him down, believing he was a beggar, placing a crown of thorns on his head, and crucifying him. Although the weapon is a revolver which glows gold and exhibits super powers when wielded by those with classical, exalted souls—those who have walked the high rode, made the hard choices, and fallen and gotten up—like Odysseus—the weapon could be any weapon or apparatus used to advance the game, such as a magic wand, whip, knife, sword, or other tool. The player (1501) finds a weapon such as a normal 45 Revolver (1502). They pick it up and hold it. Has the player (1501) acted morally throughout the game (1503)? Have they rendered classical ideals real in word and deed? Have they not only talked the talk, but walked the walk? Have they disseminated and fought for classical ideals throughout the game? Have they sought to exalt the innocent and appall the wicked? If so, then the revolver glows gold (1505). The weapon obtains its magical powers. The gold revolver shots unlimited bullets as well as lightning (1505). Sometimes the bullets come with streaks of lightning. However, if the player has not acted morally throughout the game (1503)—if they have failed to find and live by classical ideals—to disseminate and render them real in word and deed—if they have failed to exalt the humble and innocent and appall the wicked, then the weapon will not realize its magical powers (1504). At that point they may want to start acting morally, living by classical ideals, and rendering words deed, so that the world can be enriched with the natural beauty and wealth—with the peace and prosperity that comes when ideals are rendered real, as ideas have consequences, and ideals, as exalted ideas, have exalted consequences.

FIG. 16 illustrates how the present invention could exalt the hero's journey in a superior manner, and bring it to life in video games. The various stages of the classical hero's journey which Joseph Campbell made famous are listed in (1601). At each and every stage, the player must make a choice—a choice which consists of what ideas or ideals they choose to serve. For instance, if they see a hooker and hire her and shoot her, that counters classical ideals. If they talk to her and befriend her, that is sympathetic to classical ideals. The Hero's Journey has ever been walked and advanced by those who have served classical, epic ideals; and by serving exalted ideas, the gameworld is rewarded with exalted consequences (1605). This diagram suggests a superior method of exalting epic story in the realm of video games. Note how the action keeps coming back to the central premise and question—does the player serve an exalted idea (1602)? If so, the player advances to a later step in the hero's journey (1606). If not, the player retreats to an earlier point in the hero's journey (1607). So it is that love, temptation, war, peace, the death, forming the fellowship, calling the bluff and speaking truth to power—much of which was depicted in earlier figures and descriptions in this invention—can be unified in simple algorithms based upon ideas and ideals. Such simple ideals, which are yet so subtle and so often elusive, have powered and propelled mythology through the ages, exalting the Bible and Homer for thousands of years—for the soul of those books are based upon classical ideals—elements that have been opposed in this life. So it is that just as ideas have consequences in real life, they can have vast and resounding consequences in video games, exalting games to new heights. From novel games exalting the plot points in Homer's Odyssey, to the American Revolution, to all the classic battles and showdowns for Western Civilization, video games can be exalted, and reunited with infinite love deriving not from hiring and killing hookers, but for living and fighting for Penelope and Beatrice, as did William Wallace and King Leonidas, as 300 and Braveheart were ultimelt not war stories, but love stories—the love for higher ideals. The novel video games afforded by this invention will allow the player to love and honor classical ideals, and render ideals real in a virtual world, just as heroes do in real life. So it is that video games will become more spiritually and artistically realistic, with deeper and more exalted spirits, built upon classical idealism's solid rock.

Far too often these days, little feminized fanboys play little games at home as their Constitution dies, while real heroes are off dying in faroff lands for the fiatocracy. The present invention would allow them to play a novel form of game that would allow them to protect the US Constitution, and then, perhaps some day they might grow up to defend it in real life.

Newsday reports:

• • Maureen Dwyer, who broke into sobs as she spoke about her son, said she agreed to be interviewed despite her grief because she said she hoped to bring attention to the disorder. “Every second that goes by, there is another soldier just like Joseph,” Maureen Dwyer said. “Another family can't go through this. All the politicians talk so great about the soldiers, about patriotism, but mental illness is something they are not putting enough into.”—http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-lisold0706,0,814136,print.story

The fiatocracy's politicians are too busy destroying the family and Constitution at home, bailing out Wall Street Banks, and pornifying the world; as they hire and reward little manholes with fiat dollars to join in the debauchery, decadence, and fiat fun. I hope that this invention might serve the world with a System and Method for Creating Video Games with Epic Realities and Realistic Worlds that Evolve Via Ideologies—Ideas Have Consequences Game Engine Video Games with Deeper Realities and Epic Storytelling Wherein Characters Have Ideologies and Souls Libertarian Video Games—Rendering the Battle for Classic Ideals From Moses to Mises.

The basic concepts and ideas in this invention will have far-ranging implications for the realm of video games, for the greater culture, novel video games, greater commercial opportunities in the realm of games, greater and enhanced opportunities in merging games with film and literature, greater opportunities for games with deep and profound souls and storytelling, and new opportunities for games with vast educational potential. The ideas and embodiments described herein may be modified, extended, and improvised upon in countless ways. The present invention can bring both the external hero's journey, that Moses and Odysseus traveled, as well as the internal hero's journey, that Jesus and Socrates walked.