#savedisneyinfinity

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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.

[goofyspaceranger]

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.

[goofyspaceranger]

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 ;).   

[goofyspaceranger]

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.

[goofyspaceranger]

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.

[goofyspaceranger]

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 ;).

[goofyspaceranger]

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. 

[goofyspaceranger]

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.