Categories
Politics/Government

Another Reminder about the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

Another, apparently needed, reminder: the 1st amendment is about the government not being allowed to stop you from speaking your mind. You can’t be arrested for stating your opinions, no matter how terrible or controversial.

The 1st amendment DOES NOT protect you from the consequences of that speech with regard to your fellow citizens or the media, who have their own right to decry what you say, including calling you a bigot if they think you’re being a bigot.

You aren’t being censored illegally just because you don’t like that someone’s opinion of your speech is negative.

You’re just being censured, legally.

Categories
Game Design

Probability for Game Designers

Dice

On Twitter, Chevy Ray complained about the use over simplifying terms in math that end up confusing him, and Sven Bergström provided a link to a useful resource.

Thanks, Sven!

Probability for Game Designers by Cheapass Games founder James Ernest takes you on a quick tour of probability theory to help game designers understand their own designs better.

We tend to use experimental and anecdotal evidence to decide whether random events are working or not. You can only playtest your game a limited number of times, but many of the random possibilities may be extremely rare. A practical analysis of the random events can give you a better understanding of whether your latest dice-rolling catastrophe was a fluke or a serious problem.

He explains odds, expected value, statistically independent events vs statistically dependent events, and more, and he provides examples from games and quick exercises to help drive the points home.

I’m also going to dig into Ernest’s other articles on game design, including the related Volatility in Game Design notes from GenCon 2012.

Categories
Game Design Game Development Personal Development

Anyone Can Create, and They Do: Your Design Choices Matter

I used to have a QBasic game review site, which meant I was part of a small group of sites dedicated to playing and reviewing games made by a small community on the relatively young Internet.

Surprisingly that effort translated into a little bit of paying work when I found out that Game Tunnel was looking for reviewers. I got a little bit of money each time I wrote up what I thought about a specific independent game, plus I usually got the game for free. It wasn’t enough to quit my job and live off of it, but it was enjoyable.

Over all that time, I saw a number of review sites come and go, and every so often one of them would get the idea to do a special write-up on “the worst games of [insert year here]”. Anyone could publish a review site,and sometimes that meant anyone did, and they decided it would be fun to write insults for laughs.

Now, I get it. In many creative industries, there’s always a “best of” list, and there are awards shows dedicated to highlighting the top efforts. So why not a “worst of” list? Why not highlight the terrible? People love to hate on things.

In fact, I didn’t know this, but the Razzies, which highlight the worst in film, have been around since 1981. It’s all in good fun, and it’s actually gotten relatively popular, with a few celebrities coming to accept their Golden Raspberry award in person.

If you search on YouTube, you’ll easily find lists of the worst games.

Worst Games Lists On YouTube

That’s unfortunate ad placement, huh?

People love to hate on E.T. for the Atari 2600, or John Romero’s Daikatana, or any number of games based on movies.

Ok, so people love to hear about failure. The popularity of reality television already tells you this fact.

I personally think this kind of tear-down is the stuff of tabloids. It’s never something you’ll find at the Academy Awards or The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. And this isn’t a complaint about high-brow vs low-brow. I’m not above a good slapstick comedy or the occasional mindless action game.

It’s about ease.

In the modern age of citizen publishing media, with blogs, videos, and social network posts, anyone can write about how much they hated the latest stinker at the box office or a terribly-written-yet-popular novel or a disappointing offering from a major game publisher.

And many do.

But what a terrible way to spend your time! Dwelling on the negative, insulting people you don’t know, and kicking them when they are down? Ick.

It’s also easy. Someone could spend months or years writing and rewriting a novel only to find an online mob ready to hate it upon publication. One cleverly-worded Tweet of criticism, and it can start an avalanche of hate. Because of groupthink, these “Yeah, gee, it’s so awful!” comments can even come from people who have never read the work in the first place (again, see E.T. for the Atari 2600).

It’s one thing to critically analyze what makes something bad. You can comment on the inconsistent plot, or the dated graphics, or question the message. You can say it is derivative and unimaginative and compare it to earlier efforts, such as when my friend Ian Simmons wrote his review of Pacific Rim and compared it to Independence Day. It takes effort and experience to understand why something is bad and to be able to communicate it, and it comes from a desire for improvement. It’s a teacher giving a low grade on a creative writing assignment with the note, “I expected more from you.”

But it’s another thing entirely to slam something without giving much thought to it. At best, it’s a drive-by insult. At it’s worst, it’s bullying. It’s more about the humor of a good put-down than about seeking improvement. It’s the teacher who hates teaching because he despises the students and has to insult them to feel better about his miserable life.

When everyone has the ability to create, you are going to see a lot of terrible creations, and the ease of publishing means some of these creations get front-page status.

That top 10 worst games video on YouTube got over 2 million views. There was a choice made about what to focus on, and the creator of the video decided, “Yeah, let’s go for negativity.”

That’s 2 million people who got the subtle message that criticism is the same as complaining, who think that it’s normal to highlight what’s wrong with something, who shed at least one point of resistance to expressing an insult about someone or their creation because, hey, look at all those other people having fun at his/her expense.

I’ve been focusing on reviewers and critics, but the original purpose of this post was to focus on the act of creation itself, and specifically about game development.

With the wide availability of high-quality tools and resources, anyone can make a game, and many do.

Some people make great games, some people make mediocre games, and a lot of people make clones.

But some people make games with questionable designs. There was a choice about what to include in a game, and the creator decided that gratuitous violence, casual misogyny, and even downright hate was the way to go.

It’s one thing to make a game about shooting everything in sight when everything in sight is out to get you, like in Space Invaders or Doom.

It’s another to make a game in which the only motivation is death and destruction for its own sake. Here you’re just putting together game mechanics with perversity, and not in a good way.

You could simulate complex interpersonal relationships, or you could go the easy route of hypersexualization, stereotypes, and power fantasy.

There are legitimate arguments and positions to take, and there are careless (or careful) non-positions that do in fact take a position.

For instance, making a game about doing nothing but shooting civilians “just for fun” says something about your worldview and the worldview of your game’s fans, at least in what’s considered “fun”.

It’s a choice.

And with the increased availability of tools and publishing platforms, anyone can make these kinds of choices.

And many do. Sometimes without realizing that they are making important choices.

And some of these choices get front-page status, which means a lot of people get the subtle message that these choices are normal.

It’s why I prefer highlighting the best and get uncomfortable when it comes to tearing down the worst.

Because focusing on the worst is easy. Anyone can do it, and anyone can make horrible stuff so there is always fodder, but more importantly, it sends a message that focusing on the worst is a good use of time, that it’s innocent and fun to dogpile on someone after they dared to put themselves out there.

It can be petty and mean, and I like to think the wider community can do better.

And focusing on the best means that the creators of purposefully bad creations don’t get rewarded for being horrible or lazy. It means raising something up and saying to everyone, “See what amazing things can be done?”

It means inspiring people to make the choice to aspire to good work, to expect more from themselves.

Categories
Game Development Geek / Technical

How Supreme Commander Handled Rendering

I found this neat exploration of the insides of Supreme Commander, the spiritual successor to one of my favorite games, Total Annihilation.

Specifically, in Supreme Commander – Graphics Study, Adrian Courrèges takes you through a tour of the rendering of a single frame of the game.

Animations show each step in the process, making it easy to see how you can go from culling a subset of the terrain to adding shadows to rendering meshes and particles to overlaying the UI.

Categories
Geek / Technical Personal Development

Taking Advantage of Downtime #8035dsm

I’m not a huge live music fan.

I mean, when I go, I find I enjoy myself, but I don’t tend to actively seek out concerts and bands to listen to.

This weekend is the 80/35 music festival here in Des Moines, and my wife and I go every year, partly because she’s a big live music fan.

There are local bands, but the festival tends to find big names, such as Modest Mouse, Wu-Tang Clan, Cake, and The Flaming Lips. People I would have heard of as a casual music fan.

Last night we saw Wilco play, and today we’re looking forward to Weezer.

It’s like the dream of the 90s is still alive in Des Moines.

We like to bring a blanket, set up a few lawn chairs, and hang out with friends while enjoying the music from afar.

Wilco at 80/35 from afar

And I like to bring my doodle book. Since the beautiful people of Iowa tend to show up at music festivals, and I’m just sitting there, it’s like getting a free life drawing class in, although with less nudity.

Sometimes people sit still for long periods of time, and sometimes they move quickly and I can only get the barest sketch in.

Doodle Book from 80/35

I like people-watching, and I enjoy doodling, even if I’m not a trained artist. So I enhance the experience of listening to live music with a fun way to practice my drawing skills.

It’s not work, so it isn’t like I’m forcing myself to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of my day, ruining any sense of enjoyment I have for life during what is supposed to be my downtime.

But at the same time, improving my drawing skills can help with my game design. If I can sketch out something that’s in my head more accurately, it makes it easier to communicate my intent.

But I don’t set a quota of drawings. I don’t force it. I just draw.

And I found doodling is a lot less annoying to the people around me than practicing my analytical skills by wondering aloud about the design of the light show or the logistics of setting up the concert. B-)

Categories
Personal Development

Looking for Outside Approval

As a child, I internalized a lesson that is still with me today.

I learned not to rock the boat.

If I did something on my own, the repercussions were not always positive. Sometimes people got upset with me. Other times I was scolded.

For example, in school we were supposed to cut out our drawings of fruits and vegetables and glue them onto a cornucopia.

Well, I apparently wasn’t paying attention to how everyone else was doing it, and I did what made sense to me. I glued the paper so that it seemed as if the food was coming out of the side.

When the teacher saw what I was doing, she expressed concern, and she showed me what everyone else had done, which was gluing them on top in an abstract way.

I wasn’t in trouble, but I was singled out in front of everyone, and I didn’t like the feeling that I had inadvertently done something wrong.

And this same situation played out in a number of ways in school, at home, in relationships.

So I made a point of always trying to figure out what was the right thing to do so that I didn’t do the wrong thing.

Sometimes this is a good thing. For instance, in software development, I get asked to create a feature, and it’s easy to follow the spec and still end up with the wrong thing. It’s essential to ask questions and get clarification so you don’t waste anyone’s time.

But sometimes my seeking out the right thing slows me down. My approach to a particular situation might be perfectly fine, but I get this feeling that it’s suboptimal or that someone smarter than me might handle it different.

So then I don’t do it. I don’t volunteer my idea. I don’t take initiative. I don’t trust my own work will be good enough.

And not doing it means no one can be upset if I do it wrong. If the boat’s getting rocked, it’s not by me, so I can’t be in trouble.

Often I spend time looking into best practices to see how other people approach a particular issue. Sometimes there is a best practice, and sometimes there are opinions masquerading as facts.

But what am I really waiting for? Am I looking for approval from a secret society of experts who have figured out the One True Way?

Sometimes there isn’t a Right Way. There are often many ways, and just because someone is finding success one way, it doesn’t mean you should follow in their footsteps.

Sometimes there isn’t a way yet. There is no one to follow, and no one to say, “Yeah, go do that.” Anyone who has advice here would say, “No way! Don’t do that! No one does that! Here, follow this tried-and-true path.”

When I don’t have a resource that tells me exactly how to do something in a way I can easily understand, such as how to represent entities in a game, I worry I’m doing it wrong, or I’m doing it suboptimally, and it can cause me a lot of anguish.

I’m piecing information together and coming to new conclusions, and I don’t necessarily have someone at hand to let me know if I’m on the right track. I’m on my own, and I hesitate.

It’s as if I become afraid of someone’s disapproval, even if no one is there to do the disapproving but myself. I fear I’ll mess up badly even if the worst-case consequences are easy to recover from.

But these fears probably mean I’m growing and learning somewhere. So I push through the fear.

I rock the boat.

Because even though the lesson not to do so is still there, I internalized a new lesson as a grown-up:

I get to choose who to listen to, and I can trust myself.

Categories
Game Design

Do You Keep Design Notes on Games You Play?

Game Design Notes

It can be argued that being a good game designer requires exposure to a wide variety of games.

By playing, breaking down, and studying games, you learn what already exists, how well it seems to work, and what is available to borrow or steal from.

How people approach this study can vary. Some people are methodical, keeping detailed notes on each and every play session.

Others might bother to record their experiences, preferring to let those things that influence them more organically pop up into their consciousnesses as they work later.

Personally, I’ve occasionally written a blog post about the design of a game, but I think I would benefit from taking time to more deeply analyze games and recording my observations to refer to later so that I don’t forget or gloss over them.

How do you approach the study of existing game designs?

Categories
Personal Development

You Make Time; You Don’t Find Time

Yesterday I wrote about my method of keeping my goals in front of me using a scoreboard. On my scoreboard are a number of metrics I track and set goals for, including game development hours.

I have a day job. I have responsibilities at home. I have a family. So how do I find the time?

My friend Mike Grosso, teacher and author of I Am Drums, recently posted a video responding to the question “How do you find the time to write?” which I found quite insightful:

Mike talks about not watching a single episode of Game of Thrones, choosing to spend his precious time elsewhere.

The thing is, most people don’t do this. They spend their time on Facebook, posting on their friend’s feeds, checking on clickbait, and viewing cat photos for potentially hours. They watch the latest season of Orange is the New Black or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt as soon as it is available, binging on the content. They go out with friends. They hit snooze on their alarms instead of getting up right away.

None of these are bad things to do, and when your friends are involved, it’s easy to justify spending time with them. You don’t want to be out of the loop when everyone else is talking about who got killed in the last episode of The Walking Dead. You also don’t want to be a hermit or lose important relationships.

But everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. How you spend those hours is your choice.

Mike chooses to write, and he manages to finish novels as a result.

I learned early on that trying to squeeze in time for game development around the rest of my responsibilities isn’t sustainable. Because I see it as a priority, I set aside time specifically to work on game development.

Now it could be argued that I don’t make nearly enough time for it to be productive, but each person has their own priorities and workload, and I’m always adjusting mine as I find ways to improve my efforts. I cut activities and put off others in order to focus on higher priorities.

And sometimes they are temporary changes. I go to Team Trivia with friends every week, and for two months I stopped going so I could use those evenings to work on game development. Sometimes temporary hermit mode means you get stuff accomplished. And when you come back to society, you have something to show for it aside from being able to say, “Hey, I finished watching Parks and Recreation finally.”

Thanks for the concise reminder about prioritizing where you spend your time, Mike!

Categories
Game Development Marketing/Business Personal Development

We’re Over Halfway Through 2015. How’s Your Scoreboard?

Did you notice that the year is half over?

That we’re in the 3rd quarter of the year, and also that the first week of it is already over?

Most people have long forgotten their New Year’s resolutions. Others have solid goals they’ve kept in front of them on a daily basis.

For some, the passage of time is terrifying. It’s a reminder of how much older we’re getting. Some people wait until the last minute to work on something important, cramming it all in at the end, and I’m sure it’s true on a larger scale as well.

For others, the passage of time is merely a constraint. They knew there would be a point in time when 2015 would be halfway over. The question was what they might accomplish by then. What would they learn? How healthy will they be? What kind of individuals will they be?

I’ve struggled with keeping an awareness of my goals in the past. I would set goals, and I would even be specific about them. I wanted to lose 20 lbs, or I wanted to earn a set amount of income from my business in a year.

And then it would be the end of the year, and I would find myself thinking about setting goals, which reminds me that I’ve already set goals.

I just forgot about them.

One problem is I didn’t make plans to accomplish those goals. A goal without an plan? It’s like saying “I’d like a million dollars” and never caring one way or another if I get it.

Even if I did make plans, they would be vague and easy to forget. No matter how detailed or lightweight a business plan is, it does you no good if you keep it in a drawer and never look at it.

Another problem is that the goals weren’t very inspiring on their own. They lacked context. Losing weight is OK, but it sounds like loss and pain. Being healthy and fit sounds exciting and inspiring. What could I do if I was fit enough to play a soccer game like I did when I was in high school? Or even better, if I could keep up with my nieces when we played together?

Making money from my business is OK, but I had no reason to expect the money. Why would people pay me? How can I even expect the rate of sales that it would require? Setting goals about the value I provide to players, on the other hand, is something that I can control. It keeps me customer-focused.

But I found that making the goal a daily part of my life was key to keeping my awareness up.

I have goals for my business. I have a few metrics I care about, and I used to have the same problem of forgetting about the goals I had set.

For instance, my higher level goals involve the number of games published and the number of new customers I find.

It doesn’t matter what number I set if I then go about my day to day ignoring them. Then if I do remember to check my status one day, I’ll find that nothing has changed.

So I made a rudimentary scoreboard out of a corkboard and some index cards.

My Scoreboard

It’s on the wall across from my desk so I can look up and always see what my goals are and how I’m doing. I have a spreadsheet on my computer with similar data, but it requires me to open it and specifically look at it. This scoreboard, however, is easy to see at all times, which keeps my mind focused.

I have a day job, so finding time to work on my business is an important consideration, which is why I have a goal for the number of hours I spend doing game development, and I have another goal for time spent doing business development. If I don’t pay attention to my time, it’s easy for me to let opportunities to work on my business slip.

But just spending time on game development isn’t an end in itself. It’s meant to lead to the bigger goals, which are marked with a crude drawing of my logo.

I want to publish a game this year, and I want to gain at least one new customer from it. Why only one customer instead of a thousand? Because that first customer will be a major accomplishment, and I will move the goal posts once I do accomplish it.

I see my blog as a key part of my marketing, and so I have content goals for it, too. In the last two quarters I ignored my blog so I could focus on game development. I figured a post a month would be decent.

But for the next quarter, I want daily posts. My reason for the massive increase, which requires me to take precious time from game development?

It’s another way to keep my goals in front of me. I’ll write about my business, about my vision, mission, and purpose, on a daily basis, which means I’m consciously putting these things in front of me.

I used to do so by making a short post on my Google+ profile, but I thought, “Why am I giving my words to Google? Why not own the content myself?”

I don’t want half of the year to pass without me realizing it and without any change in my goals. My goals aren’t mere wishes. I know they require conscious effort to accomplish, which requires me to keep them in front of me, no matter how hard it gets or how many distractions there are.

I’ll adjust my scoreboard throughout the year. Each day is geared towards the week’s accomplishments, which are geared towards the monthly goals, which are in support of my quarterly goals. If I decide my goals need tweaking, such as the number of game development hours I spend, I’ll set a new target, and I’ll make plans accordingly.

For instance, last quarter I dedicated two evenings to game development in an effort to get to 100+ hours, but I found it was difficult to keep those evenings dedicated with a lawn that needed to be mowed and various other urgencies cropping up.

So I’ve scaled back to 60 hours because I believe it is doable while also giving me a reason to stretch. My productivity is very low compared to where I want to be, and even though 60 hours in a quarter isn’t very much at all, it’s more than I have been demonstrating. Last quarter I did about 48.5 hours, and the quarter before that was 43.25 hours.

It’s hard to accomplish much with so few hours. I’m aware that some people spend hours daily on their part-time businesses. For me, 5 hours a week would actually be an improvement, so that’s what I’m aiming for these days.

But if I didn’t keep these goals in front of me, it would be easy for my actual time spent to be near 0 hours a week because I wouldn’t realize the time was passing. I wouldn’t realize that half of the year had passed without much to show for it.

Instead, I’m able to look back and see what I accomplished in the last six months.

So how’s your scoreboard? Are your goals top of mind?

Categories
Marketing/Business

Depending on Personality vs Process

Recently I read the news that Reddit let go of their director of communications. As she was a key part of the popular Ask Me Anything interviews, which often featured major celebrities, the moderators of the /r/IAMA subreddit locked it down in protest, and a number of other subreddits did the same.

It’s back now, but the volunteer moderators are unhappy with the sudden change and lack of communication from Reddit’s staff. The good news is that the backlash seems to have resulted in efforts by the site’s staff to work with the moderators to make things work more smoothly.

I can appreciate how the removal of a key employee can change everything. People worry about Apple’s future with Steve Jobs gone now. It can be disappointing to go to a favorite restaurant and discover that they replaced the chef and now everything tastes and looks different. A high turnover can mean that each time you call your utility company you are never sure how helpful the staff member will be on the other end of the line.

But I found it strange how dependent organizations can be on one person. It sounded like Victoria Taylor was great at what she did for organizing interviews, but what happens if she gets sick? What if she for one reason or another is no longer available?

Tl;dr: for /r/IAMA to work the way it currently does, we need Victoria. Without her, we need to figure out a different way for it to work.

Personalities are great, and in some places they are key. Radio DJs, for instance, can seriously impact ratings.

But if you are dependent on one key person, and that person goes away, you’re left high and dry.

In management, the situation is described as getting hit by a bus. If it happens to you, what’s your organization’s contingency plan to carry on without you?

In a large organization, not having a way to function without some key individual probably means you don’t have your key processes documented. You are expecting one person to know how to do everything, and no one else needs to.

You have a single point of failure, and when it fails, it is catastrophic.

We have been really blindsided by all of this. As a result, we will need to go through our processes and see what can be done without her.

Yep.

If you are a lone wolf indie game developer, or any solo entrepreneur, then without you, there is no business.

But even so, take this situation as a warning that you should figure out the processes you depend upon. You might not always be available to personally handle things in a unique way each time. You want consistency.

If you ever get to the point where you want to hire help, for instance, you’ll need to know what that help should do. You don’t want to depend on someone to wing it and change how your business appears to function to your customers. You don’t want to accidentally give the appearance of changing chefs.