Toy Box Club

This goofy card game is about the creation of Disney Infinity Toy Box Clubs at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels to teach computer science, encourage creativity, and foster teamwork. The opinions are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.

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Queen of the Sun

“Tangled: The Series” begins today on Disney XD.  Rapunzel is yet another iconic character already supported by the Toy Box engine that could benefit from and provide benefit to Disney XD.  Toy Box subscriptions could include super powers for all of the 1.0 characters sooner or later, and for Rapunzel it would be cool to see a “blast radius” of healing for friends rather than harm for foes.  The focus of this post however is on Toy Box gaming in general, as Infinity’s Rapunzel sometimes, oddly enough, reminds me of Princess Peach.

The creativity opportunities are what make the Toy Box great, but it’s understood that the majority of players will spend most of their time playing the games.  Earlier posts have focused on Toy Box storytelling, the notion that a sequence of Toy Boxes, with all kinds of storyline forks, some provided by the Disney Infinity Team, many more by the fans, would be great.  But there’s also the notion that these Toy Boxes could unlock new virtual toys for building, new themes, new characters, and new Toy Boxes, replayable by some or all characters depending on each game’s design and the characters’ respective skills.

From Infinity’s announcement back in 2013, I’ve wondered if the Toy Box could be used to create custom-made Mario Party games, Disney style.  It wasn’t necessarily about having a gameboard (although with physical figures, you could have a physical board and incorporate that with a set of Toy Box games).  It was about the ability to create all sorts of mini-games, and the variety of possibilities has certainly expanded through the 3 releases.  A digital reboot of the Toy Box would more readily support 2-4 players, where multiplayer games could be a combination of co-op, 2x2, 3x1, and 4x4 competitive games.  They could support bronze/silver/gold medals as well as Leaderboards that apply to both single & multiplayer.  They could be stand-alone gaming Toy Boxes, or they might be unlocked from the storyline.  The point is that the rebooted Toy Box’s main menu could readily support a Building mode, a Story mode and a Party mode, where the latter includes playlists of games.  Playlists could be for a particular game genre with multiple themes or be a mix; they could be generated from analytics or custom-made by players.  It’s like building your own Toy Box Speedway, but for all gaming genres with an unlimited number of games.  You can choose how many games go into the sequence - 3, 5, 8, 13, whatever - and the Toy Box would tabulate the points across the set from all of the placings.

This is an extension of the “Hero’s Duty” and “Challenge Glitch” cards, combining them with the “Unlocking Fun” and “Rey’s Holocron” cards.  It’s about combining the Toy Box’s greatest strengths: creativity, storytelling and game design.  When you shift the business model and restructure your database toward those strengths, it makes the game more fun.  At face value, funding & infrastructure don’t sound fun.  But if a fraction of the original Disney Infinity Team can support the reboot based on subscriptions, if stories can be told that unlock an ever-expanding variety of games for Toy Box Game Playlists, if incremental updates to the single game engine continue to expand those creative options for both stories & games, if the database’s support of storyboard Toy Boxes and account-based preferences to playlists of games, then yes, the business model and the infrastructure makes the game a lot more fun.

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King of the Wookies

This past weekend there’s been all kinds of deserved hype for a certain castle-dwelling, rose-cursed beast.  My wife and I naively drove to the nearby mall theater a half-hour early to one of the many showtimes.  The line was very long, there were no less than four girls dressed as Belle, and the manager announced that the next two showings were already sold out.  The mall was very crowded, even for a Saturday, and we seriously wondered if the up-tick was due to ticket-holders shopping until their showtime.  With more young families on the way, my wife said she’d rather make sure a couple more kids get to see the film, that we would come back another day.  Perhaps next time we’ll purchase our tickets online ;).

The 2nd-most fun aspect of Disney Infinity’s Star Wars inclusion (the 1st-most playing a Jedi of course), has got to be flying the Millenium Falcon.  The Star Wars Play Sets did a great job of mixing space combat with the storyline of quests on the various planets.  In the Toy Box however, it was a different story.  The Enemy Wave Generator can spawn waves upon waves of so many varied minions, seemingly out of nowhere with the benefit of multiple Locator toys.  But to battle a Tie Fighter you need to drop an entire Star Destroyer into the mix.  And you can only have the Tie Fighter, and you have very little choice as to where & how many.  The reboot could provide capabilities for much better space battles, including a greater variety of space scenes with iconic Star Wars planets (which were already rendered), the ability for Challenge Makers to start games in various spacecraft where competing AI spacecraft have different Teams/Colors.  If “Space Boxes” were separated like INteriors, perhaps it could even include Star Destroyer destruction quests, Tower Defense style challenges, asteroid fields, etc. similar to that of the Play Sets but designed by the players.  Regardless, there could be spacecraft races, collection contests, with split cameras being top-to-bottom rather than side-to-side, and some variant on those satellites as an outer space version of the Challenge Maker.  There might even be those holographic projections of planetary systems planet-side for one Toy Box to segue into another Toy Box.  And yes of course we’d want to include enemy spacecraft from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, because the mix across the brands is part of the Toy Box fun.  “Space Boxes” would significantly support the variety of Toy Box storylines.

Plus there’s the matter of those wonderfully pesky Mynocks.  Many fans wondered why they didn’t make their way into the Toy Box’s long list of collectibles.  There could be a horizontal version, vertical version, perhaps even a flying version that you could attach to a Path Creator.  The ability for Chewbacca and a few others to track them was interesting.  For even more granularity on all collectibles, the “Character Logic Gate” suggested earlier (providing the ability to determine which character was in play, providing all sorts of character-specific adventuring) and the “Radar Display Control” could be combined in such a way that the game designer could choose which characters might track any collectible at any point in a Toy Box game.   

Some might conjecture that a Toy Box reboot, particularly with added Star Wars capabilities, might compete with sales of Star Wars Battlefront.  Without even mentioning non-Star Wars toy characters in the mix, the capabilities of fan-based content would provide the Toy Box more ongoing gameplay, and the overall playfulness in its animation style and game mechanics have proven to appeal to a huge demographic.  Then again, what exactly is the argument against the Toy Box Reboot, that it wouldn’t return enough on investment, or that it would return too much?  Why would the Walt Disney Company care if the demographics shifted from one licensing agreement to another, particularly when the latter provides them more overall cognitive analysis on all their major characters and supports their own corporate citizenship efforts?  Why would Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment care if this simple startup investment competes with EA?  Who is to say families wouldn’t purchase both?

What is the real battlefront in rebooting this Toy Box?  That’s what I’d love to know.  Whatever it is, it’s a battle worth fighting.  Let the toy Wookie win ;).   

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Kenobi of Holocrons

It is a peculiar position to be in, for several reasons.  I am more interested in the successful reboot of the Disney Infinity Toy Box than I am the sale of IBM services to support it.  I am advocating IBM Bluemix & Watson services, when my entire 27+ year career has been in development of the IBM Mainframe.   Before starting that career, I had hoped to be a video game developer, and with the Toy Box engine I have made several games to help teach kids about computer science.  And now perhaps there is the possibility to help these professional video game developers restart their product, make it better through IBM infrastructure.  I am more interested in improving the fun of the game than in its educational value, because ironically the fun of it is what sustains that educational value.  I am more interested in everyone else’s experiences of the game than I am in my own, and the potential for this communication may very well have more to do with goofy musical videos than it does with the actual corporate citizenship efforts, simply by showing how much I love this game :).  Trust is a quirky thing.

I mean no disrespect for the group piloting some online services for the current version of the Toy Box engine - but it is problematic to scale that for corporate citizenship & for general usage.  Schools, community centers, summer tech camps, etc. are not going to invest in an unsupported product (the Toy Box engine itself), particularly with the loss of mobile - and without new features, even a supported product would stagnate, would lose traction in a short period of time (and then the service support would drop anyway).  Free-trial, subscription-based services to the Toy Box would provide these organizations a predictable, supported product where they could budget & plan, and that same predictability with access to ALL of the Toy Box toys would appeal to families at home as well.  If IBM services would be publicly leveraged for such a reboot, then I believe there would be even greater opportunities of scale for the corporate citizenship outreach, which would in turn further scale subscriptions in homes.  More fun, & more value - and yes, I’m still holding out for Peter Pan ;).

I hope the renewed Avalanche Team is interested in rebooting the Toy Box to enable families to create & play their own video games, to share their own Toy Box Tales.  I hope Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, their new employer, grants them permission, and that the Walt Disney Company, the owner of the IP, does as well.  I hope I am allowed to negotiate in securing the necessary infrastructure for this reboot.  I do believe the IBM Cloud is their best option to create a new sustainable business with their amazing Toy Box engine - and I have a lot of ideas on how to help them leverage that.

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King of Spiders

I don’t watch cartoons much anymore, but as a kid old Spider-Man reruns were some of my favorites, and just a few years back I happened to catch a few Spidey toons with the seemingly unlikely team including Nova, Iron Fist, White Tiger, and Luke Cage, directed by Nick Fury (?!).  When Infinity released a Spider-Man Play Set featuring many of the same characters, I was impressed that they could base one on an animated series (and later with 3.0, I did not initially realize that the first Star Wars Play Set was largely based on one as well).  With Infinity 3.0, I was also impressed when one of the Toys R Us cashiers told me that their top-selling independent Star Wars character was Ezra - not Yoda, not Obi-Wan Kenobi, but Ezra!

Consider a bunch of the present & future Disney XD series - Star Wars Rebels, Ultimate Spider-Man (soon Marvel’s Spider-Man), Guardians of the Galaxy, Rapunzel, Big Hero 6 - all of these are already represented in the Disney Infinity Toy Box.  For that matter, consider all of the Disney film sequels this year - Guardians of the Galaxy V2, Pirates of the Caribbean DMTNT, Cars 3, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Spider-Man Homecoming, Thor: Ragarok - all of the major heroes & many of the villains are already there in Infinity.

If your reboot business model was based on selling new figures, then you’d be out of luck.  But it’s not.  The reboot idea is based on a monthly subscription to an overall Toy Box Tale experience, created & played out by fans, where everyone has access to all of the characters.  This leverages all of that prior investment, where incremental updates to themes, new side characters, new villains & minions, etc. continue to build up the value of the Toy Box engine.  The Disney XD factor provides new buzz to those characters, and the Toy Box experience would provide buzz back.  Analytics over time on the collection of those Toy Boxes would provide further feedback on series popularity and individual character popularity (”Cognitive Care” & “Untapped Character” cards).

Toy Box TV & the Weekly Challenges directed the builders wherever the Disney Infinity marketing team wanted new content to go.  Primarily it provided buzz for Play Sets & characters, as that drove the revenue.  As a subscription-based digital experience, the rebooted Challenges can go anywhere - from storytelling in synch with various Disney XD series, Disney films, some new online update with new themes, new Creativi-Toys, newly enhanced game genre - wherever they want it to go.  Leveraging crowdsourcing for the vetting process (”Flagging Maleficence” card), fan-based downloads & likes can further drive a larger number of honorable mentions and a much larger number of games to play, stories to be told, especially with a Community Database that can search on current Challenge, Character Adventure, Theme, etc. to find them.

Combine that with a #Player1 insert to the Text Creator toy (where the name of player 1 is inserted into the text for replay value), and a new collector coin for various Skill Tree abilities.  Imagine a web-slinging character adventure for Spidey.  It can be a storyline of Toy Boxes that showcase different members of his young S.H.I.E.L.D. team.  As part of Spidey’s web-slinging game, there’s a collector coin that unlocks this Toy Box for all web-slingers.  That’s a new collection & replay caveat to mimic individual coins from the old Play Sets (without needing over a hundred of them), while recognizing the game design specific to a particular ability.  You could have collector coins for each special ability, and coins for the various brands of Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Star Wars, and “hide” one or more of them, depending on the design of the game.  You get a tighter storyline and a tighter game design with replay value, where having the full set of characters provides you the complete experience.

Ignore the point momentarily that my personal interest is the corporate citizenship side - the XD Factor for this digital, subscription-based reboot of the Toy Box makes it a very profitable, sustainable business case.

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Assassin of Guardians

I’m looking forward to the new Guardians movie more than any other movie this year (even more than “Beauty & the Beast” <gasp>).  The first is my favorite Marvel movie, even though I’d never heard of the characters before the first movie came out.  It looks like Nebula may not be so much of a villain this time (or then again, maybe she still will), but either way we find out more of this character’s motives.

There are some who consider large corporations to be villainous.  It surprised me how quickly Disney Infinity fans turned on the Walt Disney Company with the cancellation announcement last year.  There were several quarters of missed revenue expectations; a product that big missing several times can adversely affect that division of the company.  Separating this decision from the same business acumen that brought the Disney, Pixar, Marvel, & Star Wars brands together in the first place - well, that just doesn’t make sense to me (and for those countering that reboot posts at this time make no sense to them, that’s fine; I see much more value with a different emphasis and a different business model).

Similarly, there may be some who consider my motives nebulous with regard to said Toy Box reboot attempts as an IBMer, and I suspect that has more to do with the size of the company than it does with my personal actions - for that is not a new sentiment to me.

I grew up in a very small town - basically a road connecting two larger small towns, with a single intersection - literally with that quintessential corner store with insufficient traffic to warrant a single traffic light.  My one grandfather was a dairy farmer and my other a manufacturing plant worker in nearby towns.  My father has many brothers and is the only one who pursued a college education (although several of his sisters did as well).  He’s retired now, but enjoyed many years as a high school math teacher (as well as Physics).  My parents were convinced that I should be a high school math teacher like my dad.  In college I took a bunch of comp sci classes for fun and later decided to drop the education major & double-major in math & comp sci instead.  When I started work at IBM shortly after graduation, my parents told me that I should not work for such a large corporation as IBM because they’re all corrupt.  For the next five years they continued to offer to pay for a masters in education so that I could switch jobs.  IBM paid for masters in software development, and eventually my parents came around to recognize that it’s a good company, and a good career for me.  I do enjoy teaching, and they do appreciate the irony that I’ve taught C++, Java, & Assembler at our nearby college as an adjunct, and that within IBM I’ve created & taught other coursework as well (but none so fun as the corporate citizenship time with the Toy Box Club).

When my daughter asked about attending a STEM camp as a middleschooler, and later asked about pursuing computer science in high school & college, I was very hesitant to advocate this, simply because I wanted her to freely choose what she wanted to do in her career.  She still occasionally teases me at how hesitant I was.  But she really likes it (and she happens to be very good at it).  The astoundingly shocking male:female ratio in her early comp sci experience is a large driving point to me, as I believe early, fun problem-solving activities can make a huge difference.

I do not share these stories lightly.  But I still believe in the Toy Box reboot, and the truth of these personal stories seem to carry more weight than the technology of it, the business case of it, even the fun of it.  I do believe that it was my daughter’s story that secured the funds for the IBM THINK Event.  The Toy Box Club corporate citizenship kit would not have started without her.

I have no delusions of grandeur here.  I know that I am one developer from very humble beginnings in a very large company, attempting to bridge across two other very large companies.  They are all very good companies, and corporate citizenship activities from large companies can scale, can reach many more children.  My motives are not vague or villainous, but they are nebulous in the fact that the key to the Toy Box Reboot is a better Cloud.

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Jasmine of Lamps

Introducing this “whole new world” of problem-solving to kids, the most important aspect is the “fun” - that’s what keeps them interested, that’s what encourages them to experiment freely without fear, and that’s what makes the game viable outside the educational benefits - that’s what keeps the business side sustainable.

“Fun” means lots of different things to different people - and while the Toy Box engine certainly supports lots of different game genres & themes, this post is about the possibilities of a “different point of view” for Infinity’s programmable virtual cameras - the possibilities of fan-created Cut Scenes.

The “Rey’s Holocron” post explored the idea of fan-created “Play Sets” with a storyboard-style presentation of independently-linked Toy Boxes via a new-and-improved Toy Box Door.  The “Library Belle” post explored the benefits of text-to-speech voice-overs for those Toy Boxes.  But there’s the matter of all those cool Cut Scenes.  What if fans had the option to include a YouTube link in their Toy Box description as an introductory Cut Scene for the shared Toy Box Tale?  What if development-promoted content had the added reward of the movie being transferred to the official rebooted Disney Infinity channel?  What if the Toy Box submission interface brought up the video to play automatically before the start of that particular Toy Box game?

It’s really fun making YouTube movies with the Toy Box engine, and it’s yet another avenue of creative, problem-solving play.  Before Infinity was cancelled, there was some discussion on the fan forums as to why “Only In The Toy Box” promos weren’t actually Toy Box videos - contesting that it’s more fun to show what fans can actually do with the editor.  It’s quite different than designing a Toy Box game - in a movie, you’re likely to have multiple Toy Box sets, and you only need to build for the viewpoint of the camera usage you choose.  The Creativi-Toy interface however is the same - the Special Effects Generator, the Action Enforcer, the Replayer, even the Theme Transformer - they’re great for creating visually creative clips (and the invisible Trigger Areas are very useful in triggering them). 

As far as editing goes, there are plenty of options, but the easiest by far that I’ve seen is the free ShareFactory app on the PS4.  There are a variety of video themes (including LitteBigPlanet3, and now... Stars Wars Battlefront?!), where a Disney Infinity Toy Box theme or two could make those Toy Box Tutorials, Cut Scenes, and an occasional goofy musical ;) look more professional.

The virtual cameras themselves could use a little tweaking.  They were clearly designed for single & multi-player games, and in the case of the latter, they tend to force local multi-players to both stay on-screen.  Cut Scenes lend themselves to characters going in & out of the shot, and to focus on the characters’ faces.  Currently the cameras’ maximum zooms tend to fit the entire character for gameplay purposes.  A few minor adjustments and these cameras and fan-created Cut Scenes could make the Toy Box Reboot with its Storyboard of Toy Box Tales that much more fun - fun to play, & fun to build.

P.S. The Swing camera option got busted on one of the last Toy Box updates prior to cancellation - it was so great for in-game tutorials - with this pursuit of a Toy Box Reboot and with some virtual camera tweaks to enable fan-created Toy Box Movie Making, it would be nice to have that fixed ;).

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Absence of Hearts

Today is International Women’s Day, and since I started the Toy Box Club to advocate #GirlsInSTEM, I thought I’d play this new card.  It may not seem as fitting as previously played cards like “Credibly Visible”, “Princess Power”, “Frozen Code”, “Web Design”, “Rey’s Holocron”, “Wayfinder”, “Hidden Figure”, or “Reflections”, but here is my premise: a significant factor in the current STEM crisis is emotional, not intellectual.  It is not about improving teachers’ skills for STEM or providing funding for hardware - those are valid issues, but they do not address the low percentage of girls or other STEM minorities in existing STEM curriculums.  I believe there is this intangible, social/cultural force (at least within the U.S.) that occurs around the middle school time frame that somehow convinces these STEM minorities that they are not good enough, or least that STEM-based careers are not for them, despite their initial inclinations.  It’s emotional.

The idea is to reinforce those initial inclinations much earlier in a non-confrontational, fun way.  Provide creative, even collaborative, problem-solving activities, short-term & long-term, at the elementary and middle school levels to strengthen emotional resilience through play.  It’s not to imply that every girl becomes an engineer.  It is a means by which we help kids build up their sense of self-worth and joy in problem-solving, before they hit that social/cultural wall, so that they can climb up it, run around it, or simply tear it down.  There is no point in building up specific skill sets if you are not addressing emotional resilience.

The Disney Infinity Toy Box is all about play.  In a 3D virtual sandbox, you get to pick your characters(s), your theme(s), your game genre(s), even your camera view(s) and you play.  You solve all sorts of puzzles with both logic & artistry to tell your own story, with iconic characters that resonate with you emotionally before you even begin.  The whole notion of sharing your own Disney video game, of telling your own Disney Toy Story, with fans around the world, resonates with kids.  And as of last Friday, the servers with hundreds of stories have been shut down.

That’s how I come to play this “Heartless card”, not for the decision of cancellation (that was just business), but for the potential of the reboot (which includes a sustainable business model).  Kingdom Hearts was all-but-promised with the Keyblade unlock.  The Heartless would make a great new set of minions for the emotional return of the Toy Box.  The virtual toy versions could be the result of the most negative aspects of the Inside Out emotions (even apathetic Joy), some curse that must be lifted to “Recapture the Spark of children’s imaginations”.  The Kingdom Hearts franchise has included visits to many Disney-themed worlds, and in the Toy Box you can both visit them or build them yourself.  With the ongoing delays of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, it would be beneficial to Square Enix as well, providing free marketing through the Toy Box storyline that could be completely independent from theirs - a storyline full of heartfelt emotions. 

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Ace of Gears

Many Disney park fans for many years have asked for the return of the Dreamfinder to the Imagination! pavilion, and I believe that the Disney Infinity Toy Box is the perfect way for that to happen.  More importantly - Think about the meaning of the Epcot acronym, and imagine how well that translates to the prototype community teaching the technological leaders of tomorrow through storytelling & imagination.  To find a storyline for the attraction itself, it’s mostly written already in the relatively recent Marvel comics on Figment.  It combines the Dreamfinder’s retro Steampunk with today’s virtual, digital world through time travel, and advocates girls in Stem with the introduction of the Dreamfinder’s descendent, Capricious Harmony, who has her own manifestation of her imagination, “Spark”.  Simply segue that goal of imagination-driven innovation, that sense of problem-solving play, into the virtual sandbox of the Toy Box, and you are there.  Combine a Steampunk flying machine with actual holograms of Creativi-Toys symbolizing so many computer science concepts, journeying through the colorful, varied realms of the Toy Box, scaled-up Terrain toys of sloping hills, caves, & even rivers, with platformers, rail grinds, music & color, an occasional Villain & his or her minions - it would be a great Omnimover ride - and if you wanted a game within a ride, consider the embedded tablets of Spaceship Earth’s Omnimovers - a specialized Toy Box inset could allow guests to choose Toy Box backgrounds & friends for a digitally-enhanced PhotoPass taken of the passengers as part of the ride.

In the Toy Box, you build your own sets to tell your own story.  In the pavilion’s theater, imagine all of the chairs with number choices on the armrests, like those from the former Millionaire attraction in Hollywood studios (or alternatively leverage the My Disney Experience app).  Recall how popular Star Tours is with the randomness of its storyline.  Imagine a Toy Box movie where the audience first plays a sort of “Mad Lib” game with Heroes, Villains, Minions, Cast Members, Terrain theming, catch-phrases, etc. even the Inside Out emotions to be included.  The screen can first show the results of the voting - then tell a story where the audience had decided how the Toy Box Tale would go. 

The third element of the pavilion would be the Hour-of-Code style activity that could double as a Toy Box showcase depending on scheduling.  It could involve full 3D Toy Box Tutorials or it could showcase Disney’s contributions to Code.org.  It could showcase Master Art of Toy Box Master Artists.  This third element admittedly serves fewer people in a given time period, but the other two attractions of the same pavilion would bring together the related pieces of wonder, storytelling, and problem-solving to imagination.  Disney’s ongoing contributions to Code.org and its iconic characters of the Dreamfinder & Figment would make this timeless.  The pavilion would have an overall, cohesive theme.  It would be about inspiring kids, both girls & boys, to STEM while showcasing the corporate citizenship products & services of its sponsors.  When such an investment would be made, who & how much would be invested, who knows - but the success of the Toy Box reboot could help determine that, help drive it.  Disney Infinity figures could be akin to collectors pins (as the subscription business model would not be dependent on large volumes of figure sales), and these could be combined with the Marvel comics of the Dreamfinder & Capricious.  The entire pavilion would be so much more fun.  It could inspire so many kids to dream. 

And for anyone who would doubt it, doubt the fun in it, just remember that a pair of IBMers with their two daughters (with a great pre-show video from a certain VP of Production & the Community Lead) were told over & over again, that programming in the Toy Box was more fun than riding Spaceship Earth, Test Track, or Mission: Space - that’s not a criticism of those attractions (I’ve personally enjoyed all of them); that’s a statement on the fun of the Disney Infinity Toy Box.  The children didn’t want to leave the conference room.  Parents & chaperones asked about purchasing the product.  IBM event coordinators informed us in writing that for the great majority of 600+ students, the Toy Box programming was their favorite part of the day.  This was the largest private event ever held at the THINK Exhibit, and we were told it could have been at least twice that large if we’d had another week, so many local Florida schools wanted to participate.  This was with Infinity 1.0 - Think about what the Toy Box engine can now do.  It is worthy of its own attraction at Epcot, as a focal point of corporate citizenship and imagination for the future STEM leaders of tomorrow.  That is the value of the Toy Box Reboot.

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Alice of Teacups

“Through the Looking Glass” may not be the best Disney movie of all time, but it featured an even stronger character in Alice, and showed some nice sentiments toward family.

I watched the “Just Like Fire” video by Pink long before I saw the movie, and felt it was perfect for a goofy Disney Infinity music video in promoting the reboot.  The tune is a little too high for me, even in falsetto, and to this day, my daughter will no longer listen to this song on the radio because she only hears my voice singing it ;).  The video is here: https://youtu.be/0i3hikkqY40

It was a fun set of Toy Boxes to make for the settings, and it may not be obvious what all of the song’s lyrics meant to me in the context of the reboot, so with March 3rd looming, it seems timely to reflect on that looking glass... from the “Kick that Ceiling” lyric, I think about the “glass ceiling” of women’s careers, particularly women in technology.  It’s largely a Dad’s perspective, but translates to helping out others when I get the chance.  “We came here to run it” is about the ongoing attempts to improve the Toy Box experience with IBM Cloud & Cognitive services, as crazy as that sounds this long after cancellation.  So The Hatter character appeals to me as well, along with the perceived enemy of Time.  It’s about helping Alice in the pursuit of her own goals whatever they may be.  It’s fun throwing in cross-over characters into Infinity videos, like a pair of Mike Wazowskis for the Tweedles, the Lone Ranger’s Red for the Red Queen (same actress after all), and Elsa for her sister.  The battle of fire & ice seemed to fit with the original video’s fire theme, and throwing in a “Hedge Hog” Toy Box reference with its hedge maze was fun reminiscing about one of my first Toy Boxes.  Wonderland is a great theme.  The knight who walks the chessboard in typical knightly fashion is an unexpected fit with the Looking Glass movie - it’s a Don Quixote reference to the Windmill of super-scaling the corporate citizenship potential of Disney Infinity (a long-standing Windmill reference that I’d made with another Toy Box named “Nightmare Nod”).  These references seem fairly straightforward, but one that’s more obscure is the block art animation that changed the face of The Hatter into that of The Dreamfinder.

Some might think that the goal of a Toy Box reboot is to “make do”, to “settle”, for something less than Infinity was - but I think it could be better.  Leveraging that single engine could be much better.  And I do see value in circling back to our trip to Epcot.  In the early days of Infinity, I had posted on another blog hoping that Disney would make an Epcot park attraction to showcase computer science through Infinity.  When that didn’t work, we piloted the STEM event at the IBM THINK Exhibit, but then it closed.  It showed at least that the entertainment value of Infinity’s hour-of-code was worthy of an Epcot attraction.  Perhaps it is yet possible for something more enduring with the support of multiple companies.  That is the kind of potential I personally see with this partnership - a venture so successful, that could incorporate Disney’s code.org efforts, to re-imagine the Imagination pavilion.  Bring the Dreamfinder to Infinity, and bring Infinity to the Dreamfinder, along with Figment, Capricious Harmony, and Spark, in a combination of a Toy Box Tale movie, a ride through imagination of Infinity, and a showcase/hour-of-code area for kids to try it out.  That’s how successful I imagine the Toy Box reboot to be.

In case those who have the opportunity have not yet dealt with the Jackrabbit of Teacups card, now would be the Time ;).  In order to do the impossible, you must first believe it to be possible.

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Ant of Avengers

When you have had the opportunity to be small (and some might not consider that to be an opportunity), you are far more likely to better understand who you are, your sense of purpose.  When you have little-to-no resources, no authority, no influence, no support, when few if any agree with your perspective, you solidify why you think & feel the way you do, at times take calculated risks to clarify your view, and if met by opposition or disregard still, it doesn’t matter, for your conscience is clear - for in anything worth doing, your intent is to serve others more than you serve yourself, and that means someone else must choose to receive it.  In some instances you can be completely wrong, but your intent was there, and so your conscience is still clear.  You can be completely right, and whether you are ever allowed to truly give a thing, your time, your resources, anything, it’s still clear, because you were true to it.  Just my opinion of course.

I clarify yet again that these posts are of my own views; they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of IBM nor do they necessarily reflect the opinions of other Disney Infinity fans.  But I am both an IBM’er and a Disney Infinity fan, and have been recently challenged as to what benefits corporate citizenship brings to the value of a Toy Box reboot, and how that might be received by the millions of other fans.

The Cognitive Era is upon us, and IBM is a leader in the space.  Partnerships are formed when all parties benefit - neither the Walt Disney Company nor Warner Bros. are in the infrastructure business.  IBM is not in the media & entertainment business.  If IBM is publicly recognized as the infrastructure services provider to a Toy Box reboot, that puts IBM on the spot; IBM needs to deliver.  The corporate citizenship aspect kicks it up a notch for both the Walt Disney Company and IBM, because it brings further value to their respective brands.  It encourages both of those companies to invest in further marketing, both formal & informal, to advocate a product whose revenue would go to Warner Bros., and therefore to our friends at Avalanche Software.  I really enjoy contributing to the IBM On Demand Community and its STEM kits, because the emphasis is on the kids.  We are able to advocate other companies’ products & services in the public domain to provide the best variety of STEM outreach for the kids.  IBM’s Community Grant program & Matching Grant programs acknowledge these kits whether or not they involve IBM services at all, donating millions annually.  I do not know, I cannot personally confirm or guarantee, but I highly suspect, that with a proposed partnership such as this, I can find further funds & visibility from the marketing side of IBM services to augment those corporate citizenship funds, and I suspect the same could be true from the Walt Disney Company’s side as well, so that we could reach many more kids at a much greater scale.  To IBM’s benefit it would bring further awareness of the Bluemix & Watson ecosystem early in the education system, where some of the proof of its worth is in the product itself.  The same is true for the brand recognition of the Disney properties.  Some might be averse to mixing marketing with citizenship, but I am not.  You advocate what you believe in, regardless of who collects the revenue.  Cloud-based, Cognitive skills are very valuable to students pursuing STEM careers in their higher education (and for those kids who would choose other pursuits, those Cognitive services still make for a much better product, a better game).  You are true to the marketing & its service to other people, and you can reach many, many more kids.  That’s how I personally see it.

When you have maximized your opportunity to be small, then ironically you have also trained yourself how to be big, because you have removed much of the fear and many past mistakes.  What some might view as bravado or condescension is simply your perspective, solidified by constructive criticism, flexibility, & persistence.  You have a greater potential to be big, simply because you know who you are, regardless of your size and regardless of external factors.  You are there to serve at whatever scale others are willing to receive your help.  It’s true for people.  It’s true for products & services.  And that realization can turn your world upside-down.  That to me is the power of small.

[goofyspaceranger]

Ahsoka of Holocrons

As an example for the “Cognitive Care” post below, consider Ahsoka Tano.  One might wonder how anyone could consider this character “untapped” in Infinity, as the figure came included with Infinity 3.0.  Further, Ahsoka was fundamental to the Twilight of the Republic Play Set storyline, and 3.0′s champion coin mechanic allowed her to cross over into other Star Wars Play Sets too. 

When I played through the Twilight Play Set, I had seen very few episodes of the Clone Wars Animated Series, so I had very little idea who Ahsoka was.  The game mechanic of two lightsabers for a Jedi was interesting, but I was more likely to use another character.  Now that I’ve finished watching the series, the Play Set’s storyline and much of the unlockables make a lot more sense ;), and I consider Ahsoka Tano to be one of Star Wars’ most interesting characters, period.

< Clone Wars Animated Series spoiler alert > With Disney’s public advocacy of stronger female characters in upcoming Star Wars movies, this is the Padawan to Anakin Skywalker.  She becomes a capable Commander of the Clone Wars while respecting the humanity of the clones, is subsequently framed & expelled from the Jedi Order, exonerated by Anakin then declines the offer to return.  Apparently, she must later face her former Jedi Master after his fall, and does not turn.  This is a great character.

Ahsoka Tano is one of many who could benefit from tailored adventures in the Toy Box.  Many games could fit all characters, and several others could fit all Force Users, some might even have a Republic (or Rebels) setting/filter akin to a Play Set, but character-specific Toy Boxes could have the best storyline.  Delivering Infinity as a single engine, and avoiding vetting bottlenecks through crowdsourcing make this possible (there’s no sense of lack).  Cognitive analysis could then gather the feedback from all of these kinds of games to determine Ahsoka Tano’s popularity against other Republic/Rebels characters, other Jedi characters, and against all other characters in the Toy Box.  Time spent, games chosen, & games liked could all contribute to the weights of the calculation.

The Walt Disney Company may already know how many people have purchased or streamed some or all of the Clone Wars Animated Series.  But the Toy Box can determine how much millions of Infinity players specifically like Ahsoka Tano.  Might she be considered some day for her own Star Wars Story film?  If so, what about an appearance in Star Tours?  What about subsequent traditional merchandising, and how much?  The Toy Box could help them make a more informed decision (and the same premise holds true for every character in Infinity).

[goofyspaceranger]

Ace of Sixes

There are so many negative personas associated with artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive analysis, etc. in science fiction.  Within Disney’s properties alone, Marvel’s Ultron, Disney’s CLU, and Pixar’s AUTO from WALL-E all quickly come to mind.  Consider the pushback that Disney received when it first introduced MagicBands - yet over a short time, park goers saw how the advantages of a more immersive experience outweighed their reluctance to share that much data.  So for this card I instead went with Baymax - not for being a Healthcare Companion per se, but simply because he is generally designed to help people, to try to ensure they feel good.

An IBM colleague recently taught me another benefit that cognitive analysis could bring to the Disney Infinity Toy Box.  When considering video games featuring characters of large entertainment companies, feedback on the popularity of the games can assist in investment decisions for other merchandising, future park attractions, and even films - to advocate certain characters or to caution against others, making or saving enormous amounts of money.  The nature of sequels & prequels makes the analysis that much more viable.  I had not thought of this whatsoever - I figured Infinity was a creative product of merchandising that fed off the films; I had not considered the game to be helping in the other direction (or that it could help determine selections for other merchandising).  My focus on cognitive benefits for the Toy Box had been in making personalized recommendations of shared content to each player and in providing gameplay trends to the developers to continuously improve the experience of the game itself.  My colleague’s idea was eye-opening.

Infinity is the perfect gaming platform for this use of analytics - it has the major characters across all of its major brands, with all sorts of theming to those brands within the Toy Box building environment.  From the virtual volume percentage of theming across terrain toys, to the chosen sky & music, to the individual characters or groupings of characters, a tremendous amount of analysis is possible through the gameplay of the Toy Box.  The same set of attributes that would feed into the database’s search engine for a more immersive experience would then come back to describe users’ favorite Disney, Pixar, Marvel, & Star Wars properties.  The Toy Box engine would provide this terrific control of this data science experiment - all of the characters are in the same game.  There might be some bias based on which characters perform better in certain gaming environments, but there could be alternative reports with adjustments made for that bias based on the game genre selected.

The Walt Disney Company’s console gaming policy of licensing its IP puts this type of data in the hands of the licenser; the potential is there for all video games with more than one character (although few have nearly so many as Infinity).  The value of the analytic results could potentially offset the negotiated cost of the IP, or if the Walt Disney Company prefers, there might someday be a shift in that IP policy so that the licenser pays Disney for the infrastructure costs as part of their overall business plan; that way, the Walt Disney Company would own the data in the first place.  Either way, the cognitive analysis of the Disney Infinity Toy Box could prove very useful to the Walt Disney Company’s future investments across all of its brands, simply by observing “how kids play with toys”.

[goofyspaceranger]

Jar Jar of the Disappearing Sparks

Jar Jar Binks is probably the most ridiculous character in all of Star Wars canon, but on various occasions, he manages to be helpful despite being a goofball, and some of those times simply because he is trusted.  Many have told me how ridiculous my Toy Box Reboot efforts have been, but it does make them smile, just as my goofy Toy Box videos do, and they do know my sincerity in advocating the Toy Box for its educational value.  I am hoping that this trust helps others truly consider the proposal of this post.

Avalanche Software has been reinstated under Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment and is once again making a Disney video game, this time through the licensing of the Walt Disney Company’s intellectual property.  Warner Bros. coincidentally is a known client of IBM.  I have been posting reboot ideas on this blog for months, from business models to database restructuring to Creativi-Toy designs, and admittedly providing insights into IBM’s Bluemix, Cloudant, & Watson services as well.  The ideas have always been in this public domain, making them available regardless of that choice of infrastructure provider.

Everyone is welcome to review them all.  If pressed for time, these are the titles of the posts that I think are the top five:  “Worthy”, “Rey’s Holocron”, “Flagging Maleficence”, “Shift Well”, and “Time to Save”.

This is an admittedly goofy way to present these ideas, but you do know at least that I am trustworthy.  The fundamental question is - are the original Creators of the Toy Box interested?  I certainly hope so.  Best Wishes.

[goofyspaceranger]

Queen of the Rose

When my daughter was in elementary school, her principal gave the same mini-speech at every school assembly - and it was great every time.  He always spoke on the emphasis on reading - that once a child can read, he or she can learn anything.  The school even had an “extra year” for young students who were struggling with reading, to make sure that they didn’t fall behind in subsequent grades.

I really like Disney’s Magic in Storytelling campaign in advocating literacy.  It is so appropriate that their promotion video features Belle from “Beauty & the Beast”, given the princess’s love for books (and it’s particularly cool that the video is narrated by Emma Watson).  Many Disney Infinity fans were hoping to see both Belle & the Beast in the Toy Box this spring, in synch with the much-anticipated film.  On a somewhat humorous note, it would have been yet another example where a Disney princess’s arrival to Infinity is preceded by her horse (apparently the virtual toy horses are faster).

As we prep the STEAM IDs for this spring’s Toy Box Club program at our local library, this reminded me of something that sprang up last year there.  I was not directly involved in that particular program (we needed two volunteer teams to cover both the library club and the P-Tech club, another reminder of all the great help we’ve had).  One of the volunteers noticed one of the students struggling with one of the lab exercises.  The student had picked up on the Creativi-Toy interface quickly, but later became stuck.  She realized it was because some of the subsequent exercises had lots of different options, and the student was having difficulty reading.  This was a sad irony for a library program, where early computer science education was being held up by literacy.

This in turn reminded me of another family-friendly video game, “Wizard 101″.  This isn’t a creative game engine like Infinity, but I remember many years ago when it won some awards for literacy when it added voice-overs throughout its family-friendly storylines.  It struck me that a Disney Infinity reboot could promote literacy even more, and extend the demographic of computer science education at the same time.  There could be an audio option for voice-overs on the Creativi-Toy interface to further simplify its use.  In addition, there could be a computer-generated voice-over for the Text Creator toy.  The Play Sets all provided great voice-overs, whereas Toy Boxes built by fans all fell silent.  It would be a great supplement to the Sound Effects Generator, the themed sky music, and the Music Note Creator to have generated Text Creator voice-overs. Text-to-Speech is a readily available service, a very straightforward functional enhancement, that would extend Infinity’s demographic and its educational value.   It would be even better if there was also a new Banner-like font style that included confirmation on gameplay so that Toy Box builders could opt for this larger font that could still wait for the player’s prompt.  It would be better for both gameplay and walkthrough videos in the magic of storytelling. 

Literacy is not just about the Library’s Belle.  It’s also a liberty bell.

[goofyspaceranger]

Jackrabbit of Teacups

Was considering naming this card the “March Hare”, but then again it’s the White Rabbit with the pocket watch, and this card really needs to be played in February ;).

Friends & coworkers have occasionally accused me of being overly optimistic about things - and that’s fine; optimism may lead to unexpected failures but I believe it generally allows you to accomplish a lot more than if you had chosen to restrict yourself to the so-called “real world” of pessimism.

A handful of cards back, ironically with a Piston Cup card, I imagined the Toy Box reboot happening by this April.  That is clearly not happening.  But what could still happen is a local save of Disney Infinity’s Community Content DB (and you don’t need to tell us, there’s no pre-announce risk, just negotiate it with the Walt Disney Company privately).  It is far less expensive to have a private save than to make all those files available to all of the supported platforms for download all around the world.  It’s kinda stating the obvious (and it may very well be done already), but it still seemed worthwhile to reiterate how valuable that collection would be to the acceptance and kickstart of a Toy Box reboot.  Timing can vary greatly for many aspects of this optimistic goal, but this is one aspect where you don’t want to be late!

And if the Community Content DB would be reorganized, it’s not like all of those Toy Boxes would need to all be immediately categorized a dozen different ways - that would be a very labor-intensive process, much more readily distributed for new incoming Toy Boxes.  Some categories would be set automatically though, like those feeding an Artist filter, restricted-by-Abilities or restricted-by-Character filter, and even a Theming filter, as that could be programmatically determined by toy volume anyway.  The one manual category that would be worthwhile, I think, would be the Challenge Winner boxes - providing that emotional connection with the years of weekly challenges and making it easier to find the best of the Toy Boxes from 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0.  This categorization wouldn’t need to be finished in February either - it’s just a launch idea to better leverage the save - and this month it’s Time to Save Community Content, because it’s nearly Time to Save Disney Infinity.  Let’s not be late for that very important date!  - whatever that date may be ;).

[goofyspaceranger]

Adventurer of Balloons

There are times when my suggesting game enhancements to a professional video game company is akin to Russell asking Carl Fredricksen, “Are you in need of any assistance today, sir?” - except that I’m probably older than most if not all of said video game developers ;).

It feels good to help people.  It feels good to help kids learn about computer science, about overall problem-solving, and even enjoy creative projects that they build as a team.  Every pilot we’ve tried with the Disney Infinity Toy Box has been successful, and every pilot has been nearly as popular with the girls as with the boys - there is simply no other product on the market right now that comes close to Infinity in the ability to spark the imagination in that way to such a wide demographic (personal opinion, of course).

In 2015, the Lead of IBM Corporate Citizenship & Affairs for the entire United States region nominated me for a “Points of Light” President’s Volunteer Service Award for my volunteer work with the Toy Box Club.  It’s something very special to receive that sort of award from the White House.  With the activities that continued last year up to Infinity’s cancellation, the Lead of IBM’s On Demand Community nominated me for a showcase volunteer story, which went public last week: https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/initiatives/stories/IBM-Volunteer-US-February-2017.shtml

Unlike Russell, I’m really not looking for badges here.  I’m hoping though that in some small way it helps the business case for the educational side of a Toy Box reboot.  To me, the Toy Box is a playground, a middleware game engine, a crowdsourced database, a collection of artwork, a form of social media, a set of virtual props for goofy musicals, a set of characters for storytelling, a set of tokens for tabletop board games, an educational tool for STEM, a sustainable business, and just plain fun, all at the same time.  When there are elements that can improve multiple aspects of this Toy Box, whether it’s new Creativi-Toys, new Database restructuring, or even physical game board pieces, it’s worth discussing - knowing that those video game professionals may have plenty of reasons to reject them, or conversely, were coincidentally planning for them already - that’s the nature of largely-one-sided blogs ;).

The point is that there are many young Russells in many shapes and sizes who are curious about science, technology, engineering, & mathematics, but are in need of a little emotional encouragement.  They need to be reached early, in a non-confrontational way, to enjoy problem-solving activities just for the fun of it.  They need to know that they’re good enough.  They need to know that their background doesn’t matter; it’s about how they want to move forward - that what they are inspired to do, they can do.  STEM is not something to be feared.  It’s something to be excited about.  They need to know that there are many ways to serve in STEM.  By serving them we help them to serve in the future.  All of the Russells need to know...  Adventure is out there.

[goofyspaceranger]

Queen of Piston Cups

Dear Mr. Blackburn,

It is very clear that so many of us are happy to see so many jobs restored from Avalanche Software, and to see your team developing a new Disney title.  Although I’ve never suffered a resource action directly, I have been witness to many over the years and they are never pleasant.  It is always great to see careers restored, sometimes even improved, after such events.  Hopefully this post is taken in that light...

We don’t know if your team is accepting requests for Cars 3 as it did for so many in Disney Infinity, but I thought I’d post a few; I’m only speaking for myself and not necessarily for anybody else.  Many, I suspect, are hoping for say 10 really cool tracks in your upcoming Cars title.  I’d like 10,000.  Your team could directly provide the first 10, and then empower the fans to design, implement, & share the other 9,990.

Of course the fans want to see & race as the new Cars 3 characters, along with their old favorites.  Of course the fans want to see great theming that reminds us of the new film.  I just think it would be even more fun to throw in the race track building mechanics from the Toy Box Engine which your team already built, with the dozens of themes across the Disney, Pixar, Marvel, & Star Wars brands.  And some naysayers might claim that there would nothing fresh about that.  Here’s just a handful of functions that your team is more than capable of providing in this new title, leveraging the engine that you already have...

Virtual cameras could split top-to-bottom instead of side-by-side for 2-player head-to-head racing (as they did in the Cars Play Set), and these cameras could also support a 4-way split for any combination of local & remote play.  There could be a resizable Racing Gate akin to the Trigger Area, similar to the gates used in Play Set challenges.  Sloped Terrain pieces that line up with the slope of Race Tracks would be an enormous improvement, and there could even be wider streams & cave pieces (also with new sloped pieces, and wider curves akin to the quarter-canyon pieces) that provide even greater variety across the dozens of available themes.  The Action Enforcer could be improved to fully support the Cars, as it already connects well to the Collectible Tracker for racing obstacles.  There could be a corresponding Breakable Tracker for resetting breakable toys, and perhaps some of them might release specific colors of sparks for battle racing, especially green & purple varieties (with special actions added for each of the cars) - and perhaps there could be a new Locator-supporting Spark Burst toy.  It would also be fun for some of these reset-able breakable toys to explode.  The Race Track Start toy could provide logic connection support for each lap so that there could be changes in any given lap.  The ramp pieces for the Trick Tracker could support all Gameplay themes, not just X-games, Stars & Stripes, & Frozen, and the same could be true for both the Boost Pad & the Ring of Fire.  Both the Boost Pad & the “Monster Truck” Pad could get logic connection support, of particular use with collectibles.  For racer shortcuts, the Checkpoint Toy teleportation could lose the delay that was added in 3.0, so that it can be combined with a Locator & Special Effects Generator to place your Car anywhere.  Car Ghost support could be added, as a mix with the Path Creator toy for designing Time Trial games (the ghost images of the older Cars characters have already been done).  Any given race could support traditional racing, battle racing, & time trials, either by startup selection or simply 3 separate submissions - other “races” could focus on collection & trick challenges, with bronze, silver, & gold medal support.  Community Content could support player & builder generated Play Lists of Grand Prix racing, where multi-player Challenges are tracked across a set of 3 or more races.  Search filtering could include the theming of the track, followed artists, featured Master Artists, Challenge Winners, and provide account-specific recommendations that improve over time based on a player’s downloads & likes.  Vetting of new content could be crowdsourced, with a different level of access to older players signing up for a more open sharing environment, and assist with the flagging of any content that could be inappropriate for younger players.  Infrastructure costs could be handled by a pricing mode based on usage, subscription-based, where you could have zero brick-and-mortar overhead. 

If that sounds promising, you could also throw in the rest of the characters & game genre supporting toys of this engine that you already have, along with search filter support for those characters & those game genres - it’s that awesome mix that makes it that special, and you can build up more over time.  You can call still call it “Cars 3″ if you want, but to reach the greater demographic, you could rename it to something like, “Toy Box: Cars’ Turbo Boost” ;).

This is clearly an oversimplification of the permissions & investments necessary, but you were the one of the leaders involved who got permissions & investments from the Walt Disney Company to provide Toy Box sharing in the first place - and that shows you to be very capable in those areas.  In the end, it’s not really about what any particular fan wants to play, it’s about what you & your team really want to build.  Here’s to hoping that all pistons are firing over there at Utah, and that we will yet see things Shift Well to save Disney Infinity.

Best wishes,

A Goofy Disney Infinity Fan