Expanding the thoughts on Splinterlands: The lore and the Illustrations

Hello Splinterlands Fam,

Important Notice: First of all, those things I will write are very serious stuff, it could be very boring. Lots of words, words, words but if you can get through it you can also have a better understanding about what this game is to you. I mean, I might not make sense in most of the things I point out but I try to. Just bare with me here and try to read it. Also don't judge me because I'm not native English speaker. That point-of-view where you don't write it if you're not a native speaker is something I strongly criticize in this post!

Today I was thinking about the latest lores, chaos legion and Splinterlands. As you might have read before I wrote my thoughts on the latest AMA and made a breakdown on the latest developments in the game. You may find that here. Now I want to expand my thoughts and share with you some of my ideas in order to make the game and it's background more solid! Because I found out that I have attachments to characters, happenings shared on the lores and I like playing the game more after reading those.

At that point I'm making this as a monolog but it would be wonderful if I can talk to people on character design, lore and illustration people like @nateaguila @kaljerico and Tamer(which I don't know his hive nickname) more on this matter. I hope between their precious time of developing the game they find some time to read and think about these things too. Let's see what notes I have taken about graphics and lore from the latest AMA:

• New graphics are better, designers giving their everything I think.

• The lore seems to get a little bit hard to read, please make it more understandable so people can engage more!

• Maybe the cards will be reworked because they told some stuff about animations etc. I think they may add new skins but not soon!

• Splinterlands NFTs are solely art right now, no other uses planned.

Ok, I'm not gonna cover everything even though I may not talk about those notes at all! I, myself, am a storyteller too. I write short stories, draw small stuff to express my ideas etc. And what I do for a living is very much dependent on convincing people about my ideas and making those ideas understandable by scribbling, writing and designing.

Let's first concentrate on the story of splinterlands. Even though there might be several lores, posts etc. out there I find it hard to understand where all those stories are going. Maybe these are all short stories that are just small side stuff about characters. You can say that Splinterlands right now is building the characters. But the bigger plot is not so clear, I want it to be clearer.

I know, you can say go read some and you would find what you ask already there. I can and most probably I will. But is it just the players who go look for the bread crumbs all over the place and maybe the creators get together a basic roadmap understanding the game. If you ask me I'll say %50 - %50 but in a world where we use instagram, tiktok etc to get the news about everything, the probability of people going deep and finding out the story of something they like is very very low.

Are you still here :) If so, I'm gonna give some ideas on how to tackle this. First, I know what Splinterlands maps look like but I don't know what Praetoria, Blue harbor etc. all look like at all other than the nfts, some lores scribbling some parts of the Splinterverse. But I have no particular idea about what this world looks like. At this point someone may post something under this post and say "You lazy bastard, check out this post from xx. It's all there. Fine, please do it so we can start bringing things together and dispersing the mist that surrounds us.

This can be done by a novel, a comic series or a wiki page that shows everything (or what you have right now). I know that games need all your time to develop and there are tons of people that work for that matter. What we are doing in my department is we take someone out of the production circle and tell him/her to start laying out a general guide about what we are doing. He/she goes around, asks questions and come up something like that:

" Splinterverse is a huge universe. There is a planet called bla bla, and there are x continents there, there are some parts that haven't been discovered in the north/south/east/west. There are parallel dimensions, universes connected.

This goes like that. And when you tell a story start by saying:
"This story is taking place in the blabla continent, at this time frame (long before chaos etc) at the blabla country, city etc."

And you may connect the characters to some introduced places, times and universes, the clans they belong to, the rivals etc. Then if this character is being built at that point, try to give some more details, his/her/its siblings/parents etc.

This goes like that. Maybe first some storyboards that would definitely be very useful and entertaining to analyze by yourself and by us. This would lead to a manga/webtoon/comicbook maybe and later a movie. I see some opportunities here like having a metaverse of Splinterland out there, not for playing the game but for exploring it.

That's the first thing in my mind. The second thing is kind of a constructive criticism about how you tell a story. I mean writing, not other stuff. I see that new lore has a very thick language out there. I like thick, intellectual literature. I read at least 2 books every month (and believe me a real intellectual person would laugh at that) but I'm cool about all those being intellectual or not shit! I actually want to read, imagine, and watch things that blow my mind! Yeah, blow my mind with a story please but think about people between 10-60 maybe and you should come up with a way to entertain all of us. Maybe a layered structure. Tell us everything in a very easy, clear language first, then go deeper, deeper and the deepest of it could get the most thick out there. Then try to ease everything up and thin out those stories one by one. You may not go up to the very very clear and understandable point but make it clear so everyone can engage! You may also keep the story thick but We should have a storyboard out there! And those snips of the happenings are not enough, believe me!

I also need to say that I try to illustrate the scenes I read in the lores in my drawings for the art contest entries, that way I have an anchor out there, and maybe I provide some anchors for the people out there to best imagine things going on in that universe. I can imagine and illustrate some stuff, not everyone has to do that.

But, at the same time I can see a very good effort out there in the new lore. New creatives are illustrating stuff more detailed. I really appreciate that, I think you are on a very very good path!

Look at this illustration, very very nice. All things I'm saying in this post is to tell you that the Splinterlands team is on the path of clearing things out. You can believe me that they have plans out there to make the Splinterverse more understandable even without saying! I want creative and @aggroed @yabapmatt to point to this urgent need that they are already focused on this matter in the AMAs too. As I said, that's the main thing you should lay down before adding new side stories to the universe.

There might be a plan like that, they may tease people with these side stories and then BOOM! They give us some stuff to connect all the dots! But let's say there is not much stuff out there about Dr. Blight. Yes we read that story about Dr. Alastair and the voice (Silas) But that's not enough I'm afraid! What was happening on Splinter Verse before Chaos is unclear!

I couldn't keep myself and I wrote a post-chaos story, a very ridiculous and poorly written one on this post. The Story of Doc BL8 That was very calming for me, my mind said that this might not be the real story but I have an anchor now. This way of storytelling is called using Flashbacks and forwards. You go far back and future while you are telling now. They actually do that in most of their lore stories but we don't have the main story figured out yet. We don't need all the details but give us a guide in order to find our way.

As I said, they are doing a marvelous job, but it's my job to be a spoiled brat and ask for more. Why, because I can't calm myself down where there is this big, huge, marvelous thing like Splinterlands out there but not clear enough to enjoy details. I'm kicking myself with the thought that why on earth I didn't find out about this game in 2018, why, why, why?

There are too many people out there that started the game in 2021, because of the pandemics we were shut in our houses and started seeking out more to entertain ourselves. And I'm sick of those game studios sucking us just to give little pieces of realms they are building. I want to be part of developing a game but I won't pay you to do that, neither I don't want to get paid. I want options to capitalize my time and attention and that's exactly what Splinterlands is giving me!

So I'm not expecting you to come up with a series like "Arcane" in no-time and entertain me right now and forever. We, the community will help you and we expect you to come-up with more quality stuff out there! I just want some mind mappings and guides to maximize my joy! And I think most of the people I'm interacting with right now feel the same way (or not, I shouldn’t talk on their behalf). Like @bravetofu @japex1226 @astrocreator @blind-spot and many many more I couldn't remember right now creating wonderful stuff and I'm enjoying it too much.

That is apparently a very very long read but I'm grateful if you make it here. And I'm asking creative to be brief in order not to lose attention of people but here I'm doing the same 😂

Thanks again to all people out there as players or creators of this wonderful universe and also thanks to the @hiveio @peakd and people working their nights and days to make those platforms available to the community!

Sorry for all bullshit mixed in the real stuff that would matter in this mess 😀

Thanks for reading, I appreciate your time and attention! Please comment with your every way of looking at that matter and don't hesitate to criticize me! See you later

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