Rox’s Picks 43

Video games in the real world, the importance of friends, & the most actionable way to master the art of not giving a f*ck

Hi friend,

This week’s newsletter will be short. I ordered an IKEA standing desk and I can’t wait to put it together!

Last week’s newsletter had a 42% open rate. The top link you clicked on was the download link for The Tao of Seneca.

Here’s what I worked on this week:

Finished reading Your Music and People by Derek Sivers. Derek describes the book as, “a philosophy of getting your work to the world by being creative, considerate, resourceful, and connected.” He wrote this for musicians, but the lessons apply for anyone who looking to make a living in the arts. 

The book is available for purchase on all formats. (They can also be read as individual blog posts on Derek’s site.)

If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe below and get this every week

Here’s what I learned, shared, and paid attention to this week:

1. How the gaming industry touches the real world — 

The Epic Games Primer by Matthew Ball

This is an immense 6-post analytical series on Epic Games, the publisher of the hit game Fortnite.

Epic’s achievements in cross-platform play, creator empowerment, and game publishing are significant. But what blew my mind was Epic’s under-appreciated effect on the media and entertainment industries as a whole.

Matt Ball writes,

“Epic’s growing strength has already forced enormous change in the media and entertainment industry.

This includes forcing blue chip giants like Sony and Microsoft to open up parts of their closed gaming ecosystems, convincing storied Hollywood giants to allow their franchises to intermingle, and showing the world that experiences once thought to be ‘IRL’-only, like going to a concert with friends, had the potential to be even better when online-only.”

Most end consumers of technology are unaware how the aptly-named Unreal, Epic’s proprietary game engine, has been used to make dreams come true in the real world. 

For example, Unreal allowed acclaimed director Jon Favreau to shoot,

“[The] entirety of ‘The Mandalorian’, from its unnamed ice world, to the desert planet Nevarro and the forested Sorgan — and every set within them — was almost exclusively shot on a single virtual stage in Manhattan Beach, California.

With the Unreal engine, Epic has the power and the vision to turn all our dreams into reality. As Matt Ball writes,

“Unreal also runs Disney’s ‘Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge’ theme park attraction.

Sony Music, for example, has already announced it’s building a technology team for Unreal-based concerts.

Even urban planning, architecture, and automotive engineering firms have started using game engines to design their real-world projects.”

Hollywood. Theme parks. Concerts. Engineering. Game engines like Epic’s Unreal give us the ability to create and exist in our own worlds online and shape our offline world to our liking. 

If you read or watched Ready Player One — and if not, I highly recommend you do — you’ll recognize where this is going. After our current era of semiconductors, computers, and the Internet, this is the next great technological advance in history.

2. Quote I’m pondering — 

“If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”

— African Proverb

Related image: 

3. The most actionable way to master the art of not giving a f*ck, from a Redditor — 

That's it for this week!

Stay strong, stay kind, stay human.

Till next week,

Roxine

If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe below and get this every week