You Can't Take The Sky From Me

At least, we can hope! I thought I should do a new, almost introductory, post on the Blog as there are a load of people migrating from what we affectionately call 'The Hellsite' over to its logical replacement - Bluesky. 

I'm David F Chapman, but you can find me online on most platforms under the name AUTOCRATIK. I'm a game designer/writer (having worked on Conspiracy X 2.0, Buffy, Star Trek Adventures, and designing the Doctor Who RPG for Cubicle 7, as well as my own game of dreamshare technology called WILD). I've talked about them loads, and you can see all the books I've worked on in my "About Me" page - just click the link at the top.

But what's on this blog? Why look?

Most of the time on here I talk about games and what I'm working on at the moment - at least as much as my NDAs will allow. If it's not bound by contracts and stuff, it'll be on here.

I also talk about movies and TV shows - I'm such a massive nerd that I do get a bit carried away with cool media. I used to write reviews and do previews/interviews at press things for various online blogs, and went to press conferences in the heyday of Marvel, when Avengers was just about to come out, through to Guardians of the Galaxy... (after that, the invites kinda dried up. I guess when the movies are that huge, you don't need to drum up interest!)

But I love all that stuff. I love Marvel movies, Star Wars, Star Trek, cool genre shows, and I'm still absolutely obsessed with The X-Files and Twin Peaks. So be warned, there is likely to be a lot of that sort of stuff being discussed here. (I'm actually watching The X-Files again as I'm typing this... season nine at the moment in my current rewatch).

My love for genre movies and TV is probably why I'm such a massive fan of licensed games. Always have been. When I started tabletop roleplaying, the first game I played was Traveller, but I really just wanted to play Star Wars (which was why Star Frontiers was the first game I bought). My favourite RPGs as a teen were the West End Games Star Wars and Ghostbusters games. There's just something about getting to play around in the worlds that I love...

I hope, one day, to merge my obsessions once more. 

There we go. I thought I'd pop something a bit more positive at the top of my blog for a bit - especially as there were possibly some newbies taking a look to see what I do. 

Stay safe and stay multi-classy!!

Not Content with just Content

I listened to a rather enlightening theory recently known as the “Dead Internet Theory”. In it, it discusses the fact that the ‘content’ we put online, is lost in a sea of replicated and AI generated crap, designed to tick boxes that are read by other bots and AI routines. It speculates that over half of the users and activity on the internet these days is automatically created or tailored nonsense designed to appease algorithms to get it promoted. That means less than half of the world’s users of the internet are actually people.

What does that mean for artists and creators? 

It’s a dangerous time indeed. If you’re a writer, artist, blogger, journalist, game designer, film maker, etc. you can put your heart and soul into something and put it online only for it to be lost in a sea of generated crap just because you did something different and didn’t appease the algorithmic gods.

It’s like this post. This post is about creativity and writing. But if I don’t add an image, it’s not going to get seen. So I add an image.

Me, when I worked for the council’s archaeology department as an on-site illustrator (circa 1988-89)

By adding an image, even though what I’m writing doesn’t need it, I’m appeasing the algorithm. Sooner or later, we’ll all be doing it. You write a post and it doesn’t get as much engagement as another post, and so you start customising what you’re writing just to get more views. Just so you get noticed in the sea of content that’s out there.

It’s like the TV series “Dead Pixels” when Nicky is just making the spooning action just shovelling ‘content’ into his face. We’re surrounded by so much content at the moment that it’s hard to get anything noticed without appeasing the algorithmic gods. 

A feature on BBC news today interviewed a Michael Fortin about the state of Hollywood and how streaming has impacted film and television, and it’s just the same - there’s simply so much ‘content’ out there, the big producers are struggling to get their products seen. So they assume it’s no good, cancel it, and try something else. Or remake something that was successful before. 

And that could be my problem. There’s just too much to see, too much to read, and algorithms are hiding half of it.

Tabletop Scotland didn't help - wandering around the halls and looking at the hundreds of cool games on display and I just felt "why am I bothering? No one's going to see anything I make with all these cool games out there". 

What's the solution?

You Do It To Yourself, You Do...

To paraphrase Radiohead, going back to my earlier post about where the name "Autocratik" comes from, the only solution I can see is to do what other creators have done. Do what you want, and don't give a monkey's.