Game in the Brain

 One of the things people don’t really explain about Philippine construction is that gov’t tends to expect that after time and materials margins are calculated based on 30%.

If your labor and materials, known factors in the industry, is at 100M (2M usd) then they expect a margin (overhead of the company plus their profit) to be 30M (0.67M usd)

IT is the common exploit to this as materials cannot be standardized. The price of concrete is a known factors, but the price of an Epyc Server with 128 Cores depends. IT sadly is the favorite corruption source for both Gov’t and internal company corruption for large corporations who can spend like the govt, having many 20-100M (0.5-2M usd) projects per year. With IT budgets of 100M worth per year.

One of the things I’m going to help with my Cepheus writing is my understanding of 3rd world operations and Biz dealings.

I guess that’s my niche. The GM and players who want to see if they can operate their own biz and take on the risks. Get their mortgage approved and be financed to run their logistics operation.

I will not just explain – I will illustrate step by step (bullet form and diagram) the operations process and the risks the way someone who works in QM does so that everyone understands the biz from any level of the company.

Nicco other job is graphic design for IBM, he’s the guy who prepares the slides in most presentations. I on the other hand I’m both the IT head, Plant head, and QM head converting obtuse data into Action in a developing world company where the process literacy, MBA, and engineering understanding meets severe challenges. I have to explain how our anecdotes relate to Statistics – in the time when pandemic and epidemic statistics is misunderstood and so much misinformation prevail.

It’s the weirdest thing when everyday I try to figure out how to tell a story to manage Anecdotal Bias vs Statistical Analysis – and I love applying it in games.

So we were playing Twilight 2000 last night, and I was playing a GsG9 operator – we discovered we were in a radiation zone and we roleplayed trying to get out of the zone. The new T2K had less gear than the previous versions and looking for indirect evidence of the radiation of the area is down reminded me of how I looked for evidence and proof when I didn’t know the criteria – like an IT problem I know the fundamentals and use process of elimination to figure out the problem in tedious techniques.we basically found a town we guess that the rads have gone down a bit.

I enjoy that, in fact I Frame things that way at work and I noticed that my attitude where I’m optimistic helps. Honestly I, like anyone the data is saddening, but I accept it and gratitude and hope helps me understand how it is an opportunity in the long run.

It is the Theory or the Model, against disproving or making sense of the anecdote. If I Believe X out of the Anecdotal evidence then I should look for data contradicting my anecdote in a statistically significant way. The way that the rise in cases of Delta Variant in the Philippines has been leading to anecdotally higher covid incidents in our plant leading to a month of back to back incidents and a string of deaths in my social network.

If you Google covid cases in the Philippines currently we are hitting maximum capacity of our hospitals and if anything happens that leads to me needing a hospital I will be turned away.

Statistics in work, real life, in games, – in games making statistical sense of freight and passengers where when I factor the  the mortgage all the ships are running on losing as much money as their full capacity income. Ships losing 40-150k per month!!!! If in an ideal scenario!!!

Helping a GM or player adjust this and make sense of this given my and niccos background would be an interesting conversation with the reader.

Our feedback or options makes them not just learn how their ship operates to make money, but even the port and the shuttle service, or the trucking service.

As well as tools how to make sense or convert their current campaign In to some basic fiscal sense.

Imagine being able to see Good work, like watching all the episodes on essential craftsman and the various trades and how they sell you good services and work. Seeing that reliable and hard working contractor vs the Mega Corp franchise or mega Corp disposable  freelancer.

To see another layer, they see the NPC and the circumstance of the NPC – that NPC may not be around next year even if they do great work.

I like seeing good work rewarded, even if that’s not the way the world works. I like seeing all the people they must have helped even if they only get appreciation in return.

Thankfully even if I over explain, I learned to put it in the designers notes  and not clutter the simple checklist and steps nicco and I would design.

 While I have severe limitations to my science and hard scifi, my strong suit is my way to communicating challenges.